Friendster

In 2002, Friendster pioneered social networking via Web sites. Founded by entrepreneur Jonathan Abrams, it struck a nerve among the young and Web savvy, who flocked to the site to track down old friends and meet new people.
Early on, while Friendster was grappling with competition and other issues, it filed about a dozen patent applications covering various aspects of social networking. The patent Friendster was granted last month covers "a method and apparatus for calculating, displaying and acting upon relationships in a social network" -- in short, acting as a hub to connect Web users with common acquaintances. "The attorneys we've talked to say the patent is very strong," Mr. Lindstrom says.
Friendster received a "notice of allowance" from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in July 2006 indicating that the company is likely to soon be granted a patent that covers technology that lets users upload their own content, like photos, onto a friend's page.
Meanwhile, four years after its founding, Friendster is struggling to make itself over. "We went through a lot of ups and downs," Mr. Lindstrom says. "Strategically we weren't sure where we were going."
Mr. Lindstrom describes the company's growth problems as two-fold: People got fed up with performance issues, like pages taking several seconds to load, and the company made some missteps as it tried to add splashy features like a Web phone service. Users wanted some simpler improvements, such as being able to keep track of changes to their friends' pages.
Mr. Lindstrom says the company's lawyers are encouraging him to consider "taking people out from a litigation standpoint." But he says he is also weighing less extreme approaches, like asking for patent-licensing fees or not taking any legal action at all.
After News Corp. acquired MySpace last year, Friendster tried to put itself up for sale. Mr. Lindstrom calls that effort "poorly timed," and nothing came of it.
Earlier this year, the company's investors infused it with $3.1 million in additional funding and put pressure on executives to improve performance, Mr. Lindstrom says. Now, the company is overhauling its management team and has modified its strategy.
Its new tack: Sell itself as a grown-up service, targeting adults in their 20s and 30s rather than trying to compete for MySpace's teenage audience or Facebook's college-aged users.
To address performance issues, Friendster hired a former Siebel Systems Inc. executive and engineering whiz, Chander Sarna, as vice president of engineering. With his help, the company has worked to speed up the Web site. It has also redesigned its front page so that users can more easily keep track of changes to their friends' personal pages.
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