SC

Strategy Canon

Friendster: sourced choices

20 product and go-to-market choices, oldest first. Back to the case study

  1. 2003Product · Social graph Friendster organized visible profiles around friend connections. FR5
  2. 2003Product · Discovery The initial idea emphasized meeting friends of friends rather than matching unrelated strangers. FR5
  3. 2003Product · Reach limit The initial design restricted profile viewing beyond four degrees of connection. FR5
  4. 2003Go_To_Market · Initial communities Bloggers, Burning Man participants and gay men were among the early adopter groups. FR5
  5. 2003Go_To_Market · Word of mouth The scholarly history attributes the early spread to personal referrals before substantial traditional press coverage. FR5
  6. 2003-05Go_To_Market · Press exposure Traditional press coverage expanded the audience beyond the early social groups. FR5
  7. 2004Product · User adaptation Some members added acquaintances or strangers to extend the profiles they could see. FR5
  8. 2004Product · Popularity display A most-popular feature encouraged some users to collect connections. FR5
  9. 2004Product · Fictional profiles Users created fictional or institutional profiles that others browsed for entertainment or affiliation. FR5
  10. 2004Product · Profile enforcement The company deleted fictional profiles and some genuine users with non-realistic photographs. FR5
  11. 2004Product · Feature removal The most-popular feature was removed. FR5
  12. 2004Product · Reliability Delays and outages disrupted use during rapid growth. FR1
  13. 2004Go_To_Market · Context collision Growth brought colleagues and former classmates into profiles that users had built for friends. FR5
  14. 2004Go_To_Market · Member departure The researchers connect departures with both technical frustration and conflict over permitted activity. FR5
  15. 2004Go_To_Market · Competitive migration MySpace recruited disaffected users, including bands unwelcome under Friendster's profile rules. FR5
  16. 2007Product · Feature priorities Abrams criticized poorly integrated search, media and voice partnerships while core problems remained. FR1
  17. 2007Go_To_Market · Geographic divergence The US decline coexisted with growth in the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. FR5
  18. 2009Go_To_Market · Commercial partnership A payment-services agreement connected Friendster to MOL before the acquisition. FR8
  19. 2010Go_To_Market · Continued usage Abrams' Stanford account notes that the company still had millions of Asian users despite its failure reputation. FR2
  20. 2010-01Go_To_Market · Acquisition completion The MOL registration statement records acquisition of Friendster and its Southeast Asian subsidiary in January 2010. FR8