Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Friendster to convert and Mark Zuckerberg's profile

I was astounded to see this page when I tried to access Friendster's website:
http://www.friendster.com/

Apparently, it has revamped to a social music and gaming site, relinquishing the share of social networking to Facebook totally. Old news but I just came to know of this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/technology/27friendster.html

They had called for old users to "export" their data out by June 2011. I am 5 months behind. Oh well, it did provide me with fun and amusement back then. Like everything else, "nothing really lasts forever".

Mark Zuckerberg might need to think about this adage and reinvent himself if he desires his legacy to persist. Anyway, here is an article about his Friendster profile. Just an entertaining gossipy read on a celebrity.
http://gawker.com/5691841/when-facebook-ceos-was-publicly-obsessed-with-asian-girls

And on the other face of the coin, you have Jonathan Abrams, touted often as the pioneer in social networking, the original founder of Friendster and also the cause of a biotech company management failure. But. there isn't even a Wikipedia page on him. Perhaps not so down and out, he currently has his hands full with a pub (Slide) and a site that does what seems like social networks based on socializing events (Socializr). A very ambivalent interview with him can be found here:
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070601/features-how-to-kill-a-great-idea.html

His story from this article sounds uncannily familiar, akin to a certain Steve Jobs in many ways.

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