Five lessons from Friendster - how not to do it

For all the entrepreneurs who say they have the next MySpace. "The counter to that is, ‘Tell me why you aren’t going to be the next Friendster," "It’s become the iconic case of failure."

How bad is Friendster now? It has gone from pioneer and media darling to being the 14th ranked social networking site. Even Yahoo's frankenstoner of a blogging service, Yahoo 360, gets more traffic. Friendster was offered $30m by Google prior to taking any VC money and turned it down. If that had been paid in stock, it would be worth over a billion now. The NY Times did a retrospective on lessons learned:

1 - First isn't always best. Friendster pioneered the most recent wave of social networking startups (post six degrees, etc). Great to be first, hard to watch everyone else learn from your mistakes.
2 - Too many chiefs. A ton of VCs and luminaries came in very early who did not actually use the product or fit in the demographic, muddying the waters.
3 - Run before you walk. Geographic expansion and growth of users became paramount, at the expense of a well-performing site (Friendster was notoriously slow). Without a well performing base product, the idea of adding features that made it worth adding friends could never be tended to.
4 - Social is public. Friendster had a closed profile system, while MySpace allowed you to see any profile you wanted.
5 - If your eye is on the competition, it's off the ball. Once MySpace hit, the discussion became about them and Yahoo, not about how to create a better service.

link: Wallflower at the Web Party - New York Times 

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