Follow-up On Friendster: Bad Wallflower Karma...

Back in July of 2006 I made a short blog entry about Friendster's attempts to patent social networking software; haven't checked back until today on how our Friendster is doing:

Not surprisingly, someone's ego got the best of them. Pure ego, greed and hunger to shut out any competition, claim ultimate creator of all things social networking.... came back in an unpleasant karma.

Seems their patented social networking software is a performance loser: good "chrome" and time-to-market, but rusty under the hood and in the soul.

Here is a quote from a Harvard professor that now uses Friendster as a failure case study:

There is no single reason that explains Friendster’s failures, Professor Piskorski added, which is what makes it academic fodder. “It’s a power story,” he said. “It’s a status story. It’s an ego story.” But largely, he said, Friendster is a “very Silicon Valley story that tells us a lot about how the Valley operates.”

Full article and video Wallflower at the Web Party, New York Times, Oct 15th 2006.

Watch the Death of Friendster: Patent on Social Networking

See article on Techcrunch.com: "Friendster Awarded Patent on Social Networking"

"The Death of Social Networking?" was the title of the news article I read today.

When asked whether licenses or lawsuits were likely, Friendster President Kent Lindstrom told RedHerring.com, “it’s way too early to say…We’ll do what we can to protect our intellectual property.”

My final thoughts: Kent Lindstrom's comments are representative of almost every high-tech executive I have known. Thankfully, most of the younger generation are catching on. They understand that not all ideas, natural resources, and people can be owned by an elite few fighting to keep aristocratic rule alive a little bit longer.

We will do whatever we can to protect ourselves from people like you, Mr. Lindstrom -- we no longer buy services from your company; nor do we work for people like you any more.

My main comments below were recorded at Techcrunch.com:

James Dow

1. July 8th, 2006 at 11:35 am

   The Death of Friendster is what this is!!!! Social Networking and Collaboration is the spirit of open source and knowledge as public domain.

   Some of the young MBA entrepreneurs and attourneys out there need to understand that if you start playing the legal game of patents, you are are selling out just like most people in my baby-boom generation did. The old corporate model based on exclusive ownership is dying: exclusive property ownership and rights is anti-social and it is anti-global economy and anti-community.

   Good-bye Friendster - you traded in your passion and vision for old-fashioned fear of competition and want for more and more and more ownership of all the goodies in the world.