Friendster, The Failure of the Decade

Can you imagine being first to market with a site that pioneered the massive social networking revolution? Yes, you would have been the first to put together a website that laid the foundation for what is now a billion pageviews per day phenomenon... that would be MySpace.

Friendster was first, but it went nowhere. A failure of the highest order. They missed the social networking party boat (and pay out) in part because they didn't keep their eye on the ball of operations and speedy page delivery, in part because they got seduced into thinking they could become billionaires like other silicon valley folk, in part because they were arrogant and turned down an offer from Google early on that might have made them billionaires today. It's an important internet business story and the NYTimes' Gary Rivlin has told it well. (Don't miss the "With Friends Like These" chart that shows the relative size and growth of the leading social networking sites over the last year.) Good stuff.