Friendster Sucks and I Can't Wait Until They Go Out of Business

Most people have heard of Friendster, arguably the website that gave birth to the internet phenomenon known as social networking sites. After many crucial business errors (mostly having to do with the site crashing all the time), the site has gone from number one to not even in the top 20 for sites in this market. The NY Times has a four and a half minute video story about the site's downfall which came right around the time Myspace began its rise to dominance. Facebook also joined the party shortly after.

Bottom line: Friendster is dying a slow death, and while some venture capitalists have pumped some cash into the company, it's too late. What's most frustrating to me aside from the sites tech problems (which seem to get exponentially worse at precisely midnight) is the fact that nobody seems to work there. Have a problem? You can try to e-mail "customer service," but I guess he sleeps every now and then and isn't available to answer your questions.

Most recently, I noticed that a familiar face had viewed my profile. Only the face (it was a picture of one of my best friends) didn't match the name. Someone from Malaysia essentially stole her identity by taking all the pictures from my friend's page and using them on their own page. Several e-mails have been sent to "customer service" but no replies have come back and the imposter-profile still remains on the site. Myspace would have deleted the profile in question in a matter of minutes - after the first request. This situation just highlights why Friendster should just close up shop. It's never a good idea to throw good money at bad money, but that's essentially what this latest group of investors is doing. They're slowly introducing all the features that have already been on Myspace and Facebook for years, and Friendster's attempts at these things (adding music or video to your profile, blogs, the who comment wall concept, etc.) are still worse than its competitors.

Just stop. You're embarrassing yourselves (on your own dime, too).