Friendster

Friendster was one of the first social networking services, launched in 2002 by Jonathan Abrams to help people connect with friends and meet new people through their social circles. The platform introduced the concept of "degrees of separation" and friend networks that became fundamental to social media, allowing users to view profiles of friends-of-friends and expand their social connections digitally. Users often spent hours clicking through connection chains, which frequently overloaded the servers and earned the nickname "Friendster of death."

Why Friendster Matters

Friendster established the foundational social networking model that Facebook, LinkedIn, and other platforms later perfected, pioneering features like friend lists, social graphs, and network-based discovery. Despite technical limitations and being overtaken by MySpace and Facebook, Friendster proved the commercial viability of social networking and demonstrated massive consumer demand for digital social connection.