Friendster is back, but looks very different

Do you remember Friendster?

The early-2000s social networking platform has now returned roughly 24 years later with a whole new gimmick: Users can only connect with real-life friends.

The founder of the new Friendster, Mike Carson, is promoting the relaunched social media platform as being free of any ads and algorithms. But, that's not all that's missing either.

Friend currently exists as an iOS app. And once a user downloads the app and sets up their account, they'll see completely blank space. Friendster doesn't show users any posts. In fact, there are no suggestions about who to follow at all.

The new Friendster is built for users to strictly follow people they know in real-life. And the platform makes sure it's being used that way too. In order to follow someone on Friendster, the two users need to physically tap each other's phones while the app is open. This is the only way to connect with someone on the platform.

What happened to Friendster

Before even MySpace took off, there was Friendster. 

Friendster was officially launched in March 2002 by its founder Jonathan Abrams and is largely considered to be the first major online social networking platform. However, shortly after its launch, other social networks like MySpace quickly took off and Friendster was unable to maintain a foothold with American users.

The platform did find a significant user base in Asia and was eventually sold to a Malaysian company, before Friendster pivoted to become a social gaming website in 2011. Eventually, however, Friendster was completely shut down in 2015.

Carson, the new owner, said he noticed that the Friendster.com domain was once again resolving to a website filled with pop-up ads in 2023. Carson reached out to the new owner of the domain and found out that they had won Friendster.com at an expired domain auction one year earlier for just $7,456. Carson eventually struck a deal with the domain owner, purchasing Friendster.com for $20,000 in Bitcoin along with another domain Carson owned that generated $9,000 per year.

In a blog post discussing his journey acquiring the Friendster domain, Carson said he has plans to enable a Friends of Friends feature, that will allow users to connect solely online if they are already connected to another friend that one of the users have actually met. 

In addition, Carson would like to roll out a Fading Connection feature which nudges users when they haven't been in the same room with one of their Friendster connections for more than a year.

"Not a punishment — a gentle nudge that real friendships are kept alive in person, not online," Carson explains.

After downloading the app, I must point out that all the nothingness makes it feel daunting to use the app. However, the new Friendster seems like a very interesting idea – if it can take off. The real challenge seems to be getting users on there to begin with, because they too will see an app with empty space until they start making real-life connections.