Friendster Failure

Rougly a year ago, Friendster was the new craze. Everyone had to have an account. Folks were rushing to add as many friends as possible. Old, long lost friends found each other online. People begged, threatened and whined, asking for testimonials. And why not? Friendster was after all, a novel idea. Instead of those networks that promised to knit stranger to stranger, here you were only getting to know people your friends already knew. Now, that couldn't be that bad, could it? I guess many people thought so, and endured the increasingly unbearable lag that plagued the system from day one.

A year later, they claimed to have upgraded their server to help cope with the huge traffic volume. But the point is, is there even moderate traffic there nowadays? People I know log in once a month, if that often, or only when they receive an email notification that someone wanted to add them, or had sent them a message or testimonial. I myself log in only when I get an email from friendster, having, like many other people I know, gotten to know zero new friends from Friendster.

Having had such a promising start, what caused Friendster to be such a huge flop? Besides the possibility that me and my friends are such pure losers we can't get anyone to WANT to know us, despite the flowery testimonials and studio photos and stuff...

Oh sure, I've approached, and been approached by people with genuine intentions to get to know someone with similiar interests. A couple of correspondences which eventually peltered out due to some reason or another and died a natural death, or stopped cold when it came to exchanging contact numbers...'er...talk here cannot meh? msn? email?' ...and eventually died a natural death as well. Or when the person with similiar interests possesses a certain bonus like a pretty face...expect no answers unless you have a similiar bonus.

I've had a narry of explanations on why Friendster didn't work the way it was meant to. Asian culture? More reserved? The fear that every person approaching you is a wolf or desperado in disguise? I mean...look at the way some girls who think they are attractive put down ground rules on how guys should approach them..."DO NOT MSN me...I will ignore you. Make sure your message to me is INTERESTING and not "Hi..i want to know you"..."... Talking as if there are hordes of people wanting to know them...duh. Or maybe...yeah...me and my friends are ugly losers who couldn't get a lay. Or maybe, the bottomline is I don't know what went wrong.

Maybe I should stop speculating and watch as Friendster fades away.

Riding hard, fast, safely AND taking a few corners.