Friendster

The social network that came first

Shut down
19902026

Friendster was the first mass social network, launched in March 2002 by Jonathan Abrams, and famously turned down a $30 million offer from Google in 2003. It peaked around 115 million registered users, mostly in Southeast Asia, pivoted to gaming in 2011 and shut down for good on 14 June 2015.

Timeline

  1. 2002
  2. March 2002 Launch
    Friendster launches

    The first social network to reach a mass audience.

  3. 2003
  4. June 2003 Peak
    Three million users within months of launch

    Explosive early growth makes Friendster the template every later social network copies.

  5. October 2003 Incident
    Turns down Google's ~$30M acquisition offer

    Takes venture funding instead; becomes a canonical Valley cautionary tale.

  6. 2006
  7. July 2006 Legal
    Granted a broad social-networking patent

    US patent covering connections between users arrives too late to matter competitively.

  8. 2008
  9. August 2008 Peak
    Around 115 million registered users

    Growth concentrated in Southeast Asia.

  10. 2009
  11. 9 December 2009 Acquisition
    MOL Global buys Friendster

    Reported ~$26.4M.

  12. 2011
  13. May 2011 Rebrand
    Social profiles deleted; relaunch as gaming site

    The original social network effectively dies here.

  14. 2015
  15. 14 June 2015 Shutdown
    Friendster suspends services indefinitely

    "Taking a break" that never ended.

Ownership

Friendster, Inc. 2002–2009 Founded Turned down Google's ~$30M offer in 2003
MOL Global 2009–2015 Acquisition, $26.4M Malaysian online payments company; pivoted the site to gaming

Key figures

MetricValueAs ofConfidence
Registered accounts ▲ 115 million August 2008 Reported Peak, majority in Southeast Asia

Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate

Why it shut down

Official line: The site was replaced with a notice that Friendster was "taking a break" while the company reassessed; it never returned.

Our analysis: Friendster invented the social-network category and then lost it to technical failure: pages took 20+ seconds to load for years while MySpace and Facebook shipped. The 2003 rejection of Google's $30M offer became Silicon Valley's favourite cautionary tale. It survived longest as a Southeast Asian gaming site.

History

First

Friendster launched in March 2002 and defined the template: real names, profiles, friend lists, degrees of separation. Within months it had millions of users and the hottest brand in the Valley. In 2003 Google offered about $30 million in pre-IPO stock; the board said no and took VC money at a $53 million valuation instead. That stock would have been worth billions.

Losing by loading

Friendster's servers never kept up. Pages took twenty seconds or more through 2004-2005 while MySpace let users decorate profiles and Facebook rolled out campus by campus. The audience that stayed was increasingly in the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, and in 2009 Malaysian payments company MOL Global bought Friendster for a reported $26 million. In 2011 it deleted all social profiles and relaunched as a gaming site; in June 2015 the site was suspended "to take a break", which turned out to be forever. The patents had already been sold to Facebook in 2010, a fittingly ironic epitaph.

Similar projects

MySpace A place for friends 2003–now Google+ The social network everyone was signed up to and nobody used 2011–2019 Digg The front page of the web, until v4 2004–2012 Orkut Brazil's living room, built in a 20% project 2004–2014 Yahoo Answers The internet's strangest Q&A community 2005–2021 ICQ The messenger that gave you a number 1996–2024

Sources

  1. The Untold Truth Of Friendster SlashGear 4 April 2022 [archived]
  2. The Rise and Fall: What Happened To Friendster? Failory [archived]

Last verified: 11 August 2026