Friendster

Jonathan Abrams launched Friendster in Mountain View, California during March 2002 to let users build public profiles and connect through mutual friends. The platform introduced a social graph that allowed strangers to meet via friends of friends, effectively creating the blueprint for modern social networking before Facebook or MySpace existed. At its peak, the service counted over 100 million users globally, with particularly dense adoption in Southeast Asia where it became a dominant cultural force.

Technical limitations eventually slowed load times and drove users away to competitors like MySpace. The original company shifted operations to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, operating under the name Amigos, Inc. to focus on the Asian market after losing ground in the United States. By 2009, the original iteration shut down and the domain remained dormant for nearly a decade.

A significant revival occurred around April 2026 when Philadelphia-based programmer Mike Carson purchased the brand. This new iteration functions as an invite-only mobile application available on iOS and Android. The app enforces real-life connections by requiring users to physically tap phones to add friends, eliminating algorithms and advertisements entirely. [edit]