You know, this one.
Back in 2002 or 2003 when it was first introduced, Friendster was the hottest thing around. It was the Facebook of its time before there even was a Facebook. By today's Facebook standards, it was rather rudimentary - but it was cutting-edge for its time. It allowed you to add friends from pretty much every stage of your life provided you could find them. And more interestingly, it could allow you to see what friends you have in common with other friends. In other words, it was (at least in theory) a working model of the Six Degrees of Separation theory where everyone on earth is separated by no more than six degrees of acquaintanceship.
The profile page in itself was already fascinating enough.
Friends pixellated out. The FS isn't, because you already know of her existence.
On top of that, there was the so-called 'testimonials' function. It's just like how your form teacher or your former supervisor would write you a letter praising your attributes so as to give your future employers a good impression of you. Except this time, it's your friends who are praising you. In a manner of speaking.
Sorry, still no pizzas for you.Looking back, I see this whole concept of 'testimonials' as nothing more than a gimmick. As one of my good friends once said of this concept: 'I don't need my good friends to remind me what a great guy I am. And I don't need my not-so-good friends to remind me what a jerk I can be.'
Somewhere along the way, though, Friendster seemed to have lost the plot. Sure, Facebook came up and took a big chunk of the social networking pie, but more to the point, it became stagnant. It didn't try to evolve itself to make it more appealing to the teeming masses as more and more social networking websites came up. Sure, it did crank up its server capacity and corrected many of the reliability issues that plagued it at its inception, but other than that, it really didn't offer anything distinct from the whole smorgasbord of social networking websites such like Hi-5 and WAYN.com (and yes, Facebook).
You know what was the last straw for me? This:
When ads for webcam strippers start appearing on the Testimonials section, you know that the time has come to jump ship.
So long, Friendster. It was nice knowing you.
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