Friendster founder : Jonathan abraham
Friendster is an Internet social network service. The Friendster site was founded in Mountain View, California by Jonathan Abrams in 2002 and is privately owned. Friendster is based on the Circle of Friends (social network) technique for networking individuals in virtual communities and demonstrates the small world phenomenon.
Friendster was considered the top online social network service until around April 2004 when it was overtaken by MySpace in terms of page views, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. [1] Friendster has also received competition from all-in-one sites such as Windows Live Spaces, Yahoo! 360, and Facebook.
Google offered $30,000,000 to buy out Friendster in 2003, but they were turned down. [2]
Friendster was funded by Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers and Benchmark Capital in October 2003 with a reported valuation of $53 million.
In April 2004, John Abrams was removed as CEO and Tim Koogle took over as interim CEO. Koogle previously served as President and CEO at Yahoo!. Koogle was later replaced by Scott Sassa in June 2004. Sassa left in May 2005 and was replaced by Taek Kwon. Taek Kwon was then suceeded by Kent Lindstrom, following a recapitalization by Kleiner and Benchmark that valued Friendster at less than one-twentieth its 2003 valuation.
Friendster’s decision to stay private instead of selling to Google in 2003 is considered one of the biggest blunders of Silicon Valley, the Associated Press claims.[1]
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