Remember Friendster? No, I didn't-he never made an impact in Europe. But it's a social network that promises to be the next big thing on the Internet before the first MySpace and Facebook ran with that title. In fact, it grew so fast that he fell over, its technology, cannot cope with the sharp increase in demand.
In my journey through the history of social networking Friendster's founder, I met another man who can claim back what we communicate.
Jonathan Abrams, founder of Friendster
In 2002, Jonathan Abrams, a Canadian engineer who has worked for major technology firms and started several businesses of his own, find themselves over time on his hands. It was the depth of the dotcom crash, and he wondered whether his career has already peaked.
He told me that gave him the space to pursue his idea of a website that would allow his friends better run their social life. More and more of them are using Online dating sites, but he saw a big flaw-who knew who really were people at the other end?
He decided that the place where you use your own name and manage your offline social life with online presence would be attractive. "Friendster," he explained, "most of the way people use technology was anonymous and they interacted in a virtual world, completely disconnected from the real world. The difference was with Friendster, you use your real name, real picture and interact with people you met in the real world ".
He was right about the attractiveness of the merging of real and virtual worlds. He started with friends on a password-protected site, but Friendster quickly gone viral. "People have found the site fun and useful, they want their friends to be on it, so they are errors of their friends to join, and then it has grown exponentially.
During the year, it attracts millions of users, many excited media and won the big name venture capital support.
So what went wrong? Just about everything. Abrams love his supporters, the company quickly went through four senior managers, and there were huge technical problems. The Site barely worked for two years, "is how founder puts it.
He eventually left and since participates in a number of other enterprises. We met in his latest venture in San Francisco's Soma, an empty office suite furnished in boxes, become founders of den, general social space for entrepreneurs.
Friendster is still around, advertising itself as a social gaming platform and obviously enjoying popularity in Asia, which currently are based most of its users. But whatever happens to him now he played a vital role-helping grow Facebook without major technical hiccups. Fascinating book by David Kirkpatrick in the Facebook effect, he recounts how Mark Zuckerberg fretted about what happened to Friendster and found that its business will not allow users to outside technology drive failure.
Online pioneer Stewart brand, who started the whole Earth Catalog
Previously I met are very different and a lot of old pioneer online community. Stewart brand-a legend in California counterculture movement, the man who started the whole Earth Catalog, an analogue of the Facebook group for eco types and then took it on the Internet well, whole earth ' lectronic link.
But what struck me was that the very principles which were later to prove successful in Friendster and Facebook-requirement that members have used their real names, mixing and autonomous networks, was convicted in the 1980s to well.
As Stewart brand decided that a new online community will reject the anonymity that was then the norm on the bulletin boards and other early computer forums. "This was politically against the grain", he told me. "The whole idea was that the anonymity of the liberated people say important things and all I could see that people anonymity released insult one another without retaliation and they did it with abandon. Very responsible people, corporate and academic when they were able to speak anonymously, they did so with such brutality and cruelty, it took my breath away. "
Soon a new online community is flourishing, its members have discussed everything from the meaning of life with the nature of sexuality on the merits of various operating systems and then meeting in the real world to continue conversations.
This community is the garden of Eden-Stewart brand and other leaders had to try to control the behavior of the "trolls", who began to infest some of the conversations-but it is resilient and so far about 25 years after his birth.
You would think that someone from generation Stewart brand and the political environment will look suspiciously on Facebook, with its mostly trivial maintenance and its increasingly commercial nature. No bit of it
"Facebook is fantastic," he told me, explaining that he saw that some of those same principles at work, Mark Zuckerberg, who defined well: "I am very impressed with the many instincts that Zuckerberg has. Taking no anonymity as absolutely essential to the company and thus beating out the competition. Facebook identity is one of the most valuable things the company offers. Lack of anonymity is what gives it value.
On the Internet nobody knows you're a dog, according to a famous cartoon in New York. But if you were to believe social networking pioneer, Fido would be better off coming clean about his idenitity on his Facebook profile.
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