About the Author

Chris Shiflett is an author and speaker who leads the web application security practice at OmniTI.

Fired for Blogging

Tue, 31 Aug 2004 at 17:22:06 GMT
3 Comments
References

I just read Joyce Park's blog entry about her termination from Friendster. The opening paragraph sums it up pretty well:

So I was terminated from Friendster today. The reason given was blogging.

If true, this paints a poor picture of Friendster, a supposed social networking resource. It seems to me that if the Friendster management had any foresight, they would be trying to think of ways to improve their primitive idea of social networking and combine blogging, job hunting, matchmaking, and every other online social activity into one. In this industry, you innovate or die, and it looks like Friendster has chosen to die.

Many people have been cancelling their accounts as a result of Joyce's termination, or more accurately, because of the reason given to Joyce for the termination. I would probably do the same, but I never signed up for an account (the abysmal performance was too intolerable).

You might recall that my summary of Friendster's switch to PHP was mentioned on Slashdot. I can't help but think that this added tremendous exposure to Joyce's blog entry on the topic. In fact, Joyce mentioning the transition in her blog is what sparked all the attention, and it seems like Friendster benefitted tremendously as a result.

So, Friendster is dying, and now it's pretty public. Will orkut succeed where Friendster failed? Based on the lack of innovation there, it seems unlikely.

Social networking seems to be a huge market waiting to be tapped. Maybe the FOAF project will come up with something creative. If you're looking for a good research area or wondering if there are any big ideas left to be discovered, you might want to consider social networking. With a little creativity, you could easily find yourself leading the way.

About This Post

Fired for Blogging was posted on Tue, 31 Aug 2004 at 17:22:06 GMT.

3 Comments

1. Chris Shiflett said:

You can read more about this story here:

http://news.com.com/2102-1038_3-533...g=st.util.print
Thu, 16 Sep 2004 at 19:23:24 GMT Link

2. Juan said:

It seems as if lately, everywhere you look, people is talking about how social networking is suddenly on a free fall - I just read John C Dvorak's last article on the subject (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1648185,00.asp). However, I think the mistake is that most of these people are judging an entire field by looking at two bad apples. Friendster and Orkut have probably been the two sites that have gotten most of the attention, and as Orkut is a Google "thing", many people must have thought "oh well, if that's how Google does social networking, I guess this gotta be as good as it gets". Wrong.

Look at all the new sites that are appearing. Sure thing, many of them are just a "me too" thing, but then there's those that in addition to the social networking toys, actually offer something else of value. For example, all the sites I'm about to mention offer all the SN toys you'd like, then some more, and in addition to that, they offer something that people can actually use:

MySpace.com: Blogs, music, etc.

Multiply.com: Blogs (like mySpace but better IMO)

eGrupos.com: Email groups (like YahooGroups but better IMO).

Social networking on a free fall? Nah. Orkut and Friendster dying? You bet!

And so here it comes the first Google project that tried, got a lot of attention "because it's Google", but in the end it sucked big time, and failed. Let's hope from now on Google doesn't try to get new things out there and we witness their "success because it's Google" but because the services themselves really deserve it. Otherwise, Google would have reached mediocrity, big time. And honestly, Blogger, Picasa and this new Google Groups 2 thing aren't particularly impressive. Oh well, that's another story :-)

Sat, 25 Sep 2004 at 07:28:34 GMT Link

3. Daniel Talsky said:

She got dooced.
Fri, 08 Oct 2004 at 21:36:48 GMT Link

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