Tutorial task Week 3

Friendster was a pioneer and one of the first social networks, started in 2002. It was started in USA, but is now most popular in Asia. It was a site where you could play games, share music, join groups, discuss, stay in touch with friends or meet new people. It was an interactive site where you could upload pictures, videos, comment and send messages to people from all over the world. Friendster had 115 million members in 2008, but the number has decreased a lot. As other social networking sites expanded, sites like Facebook provided more features that Friendster didn’t have. Facebook got a news feed where you could easily see friends’ updates, discussions and shares as soon as you were online. The status updates made it possible to continuously show everyone what you were doing at different times, and you can tag people in pictures you upload. Since then Facebook have only grown bigger and bigger and they now provide an online chat, and the possibility to even have a video chat.

As Facebook stole many of Friendster’s members, they understood that they had to do something. In May 2011, they went from being a social network to an entertainment site where you can play online games. Even though Friendster “lost” the battle against Facebook, it played a really important role when it comes to inventing one of the first social networks sites and influenced many young people everyday life. I don’t think Facebook would have grown so much so fast, if no one had shown web users how to you could be social by using the internet. Social networking was already a part of peoples everyday life when Facebook came along, all Facebook had to do was to offer new features and apps that made people choose them instead of the old ones.

Resources:

Roeder, L., What Is Friendster.com? What Does Friendster.com Offer?, viewed 17 August , 2011, http://personalweb.about.com/od/easyblogsandwebpages/a/whatsfriendster.htm

Corpuz, N. 27 April 2011, Friendster: It’s a Facebook world, ABS-CBN News, viewed 17 August, 2011, http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/-depth/04/27/11/friendster-admits-defeat-facebook

Molglobal, Friendster living the game, viewed 17 August 2011, http://www.molglobal.net/?page_id=1321

Pachal, P. April 28 2011, Why Friendster Died: Social Media Isn’t a Game, PCmag, viewed August 17 2011, http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2384588,00.asp

Perdu, A April 1 2008, The History of Friendster, viewed August 17 2011, http://webupon.com/social-networks/the-history-of-friendster/

Difference Between Facebook and Friendster, viewed August 17 2011, http://www.differencebetween.net/technology/internet/difference-between-facebook-and-friendster/

Kimian July 7 2011, Friendster’s Sample! Sample! Sample!, viewed August 17 2011

http://webupon.com/social-networks/friendsters-sample-sample-sample-part-2/