Friendster (FRIENDSTER)

Friendster was one of the very first social networks that gained massive popularity. The platform allowed users to create profiles and connect with friends and loved ones, and got its name as a portmanteau of the words friend and Napster, the infamous peer-to-peer, music-file sharing application from the late ‘90s and early 2000s.

With more than 3 million active users just six months after its launch, Friendster enjoyed a meteoric rise in popularity. But the site was also plagued by issues. According to Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams, the main problem was that “Friendster was having a lot of technology problems.” In particular, he noted that people “could barely log into the website for two years” and that contributed to its eventual loss of market share. Also, it was one of the big reasons why users eventually left it for something that was new and better at the time: Myspace.