This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago. Visit the Product Blog for more information on our products.

Actually starting a service based on this concept. Check back in a couple months.

Founder Jonathan Abrams vows to never again accept a dime in venture capital again.

He’s also picked up a job at the Department of Redundancy Department

You know, I read that story in New York Times about Friendster and when I read that part about him not taking any VC money again, I about choked on my coffee.

After all of this time, Abrams still refuses to accept the part that he played in the downfall of Friendster: He wasn’t a strong enough C.E.O.; Had he been a little more resilient in his leadership of the company, the board would’ve never replaced him and put someone else in charge of the company who didn’t know what they were doing.

Yes the V.C.’s played a major part in the what went wrong, but the starting domino lays with Abrams and until he accepts that and makes moves to rectify that, none of his ventures will eve be successful. I think studying how bad a C.E.O. you were is the greatest mistake to learn from.

It’s interesting reading about Kiko. One of the problems we’ve had is in trying to reduce cute hacks (from point #3) we think out farther which introduces problems with getting sidetracked on new ideas (from point #1). Especially since new stuff is much much cooler then cleaning up old stuff.

If chris is reading this #2 is definitely not a problem bud ;)

One more,though very generic one. Paul Graham’s “The 18 Mistakes that kill startups” here : http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html

I’m surprised that MySpace is so successful given its horrid design, usability, and performance problems. I can’t stay on that site for any longer than 5 minutes before I get frustrated with delays, errors, and difficulty using various features. What is MySpace doing that makes it so much more successful than Friendster?

Mistakes are where the learning is at. No need for them to kill you, so long as you don’t string a bunch together. Sounds like Friendster strung a bunch together…

In the context of SvN I think the following quote is equally important, pointing to the root of their engineering problems:

“In the past, we had often chosen the more exotic solution over the more simple solution,” …. “But we were also trying to innovate on the tech side as well,”

Interesting article, although I think its pre-mature to write off Friendster as a failure. It may be in the eyes of VC’s, who are always looking for the “next greatest thing”, but it certainly has a userbase that still updates it (MySpace has a reputation for pedophiles that actually keep some people away from it). Friendster certainly could re-make itself.

All of this is interesting to watch, however.

You miss the biggest one of all: discouraging innovative users.

Per the article:

Early on, the company famously removed the profiles of people who put up joke pictures, like photographs of their dogs in place of themselves.

MySpace, for better or worse, lets people do all kinds of stuff that Friendster never would: customizable designs, embedded media, humorous and risque photos, users that weren’t “people” in the strict sense (e.g. bands).

Friendster has always been sterile, restrictive and stern—i.e. not the least bit “social”.

I can’t help but wonder how successful a third approach would have been—instead of permitting (MySpace) or forbidding (Friendster) creativity, actually encouraging it by making skinning easy, providing an API , etc.

If only Mr. Abrams had read “Getting Real”, eh? Oopsie.

While I know next to nothing about what it’s like to be a CEO with a bunch of venture capitalists breathing down my neck, I agree with Frank Young. A CEO needs to be able to push back and say no to investors who try to call the shots. You have to be clear with them at the outset that you’re running the company, and that while you’ll consider their suggestions you’re going to make your own decisions. If they’re not comfortable with that, then you don’t want them as investors. You have to hire investors like you hire employees. You don’t say to every prospective employee, “oh, you want to work for me? Wow, you’re hired!” Likewise, you have to pick investors you can work with. If they’re micromanagers or if you sense that they’re not going to give you some trust, you’re going to regret taking their money.

If only Mr. Abrams had read “Getting Real”, eh? Oopsie.

snark on

From the quoted text:

As Friendster became more popular, its overwhelmed Web site became slower. Things would become so bad that a Friendster Web page took as long as 40 seconds to download…[Yet] technical difficulties proved too pedestrian for a board of this pedigree.

Maybe they just read the “Scale Later” chapter one too many times?

snark off

It may be tempting to use this as an example of not planning a scalable architecture in the beginning but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Fact is, Friendster stopped all development on the core system for many months while it readied a brand new system from scratch. All it needed to do was make some modifications to the existing system and it would have scaled fine (for example, caching “My Friends”).

You’re starting a business based on learning from your mistakes, Dennis?

MySpace is succesfull because people can easily post music to a personal site viewable by people who don’t have to sign up… When is the last time you heard of a budding musician withOUT a MySpace page?

I can’t help but smirk when reading this article — I’ve met Mr. Abrams on numerous occasions at social events in San Francisco and he consistently leaves a bitter taste in my mouth due to his arrogant demeanor. On the other hand, I remain confused as to why MySpace — complete with rancid design, obnoxious teen rule and, worst of all, the rebirth of the animated gif tile background — has prevailed as much as it has. Granted, it’s faster and all that, but I can’t stand to be on anyone’s MySpace page for longer than 30 seconds (which is about as long as it takes to scroll through fifty “THANKS FOR THE ADD !!!!!” user comments). At least Friendster has a friendlier UI. And I love seeing the degrees-of-separation as cleanly as it’s portrayed on my Friendster page (by far and away its greatest tool, IMO ).

Is this MySpace reign due to the ability to bring the design aesthetic down to the lowest common denominator? Or is it because Abrams is simply getting what he deserves?

Nonetheless, I still have hope for Friendster. And, Jonathan: take my advice and, next time, take some advice.

Performance problems led to Friendster’s downfall—is that a new insight? I thought that was the conventional wisdom.

It rings true with me: I think the fourth time I visited the site in as many days only to see a “site busy, come back later” message basically was a dealbreaker. I’d imaging tens of thousands (millions?) of others felt the same.

Don’t want to give out all the info yet, Andy. It does involve “mistakes” though. If anyone is interested in wanting to test it out soon then just send an email to dennis[at]thoughtandtheory.com.

Sorry for posting this on the comments, don’t want people to think this is spam.

Also, one last thing I wanted to add to the conversation, the one thing that really lost my interest in friendster was their performance issues. I tried it once when they were first starting out but now they seem to be on the up and up. Pretty interesting to see that they are on the path to turning things around.

Is this MySpace reign due to the ability to bring the design aesthetic down to the lowest common denominator?

I think it’s because only a vanishingly small percentage of web users care about design. What they’re interested in is content. As long as they can click on a link and hear some music or see a video, the rest doesn’t really matter; the page can be ugly and messy as hell but they’ll still be happy.

I think the real reason people don’t care about design in general is because people react to great design, not good design. Case in point, the iPod is a case for great design. There were other and still are other mp3 players that are “good” designs but they don’t transcend into that “great” category.

Its not easy to get to that great category but its doable. If the functionality is the same things on a site that’s “okay” and “poor” then people really won’t care.

Did y’all know there’s STILL no social networking site with an API ? Someone get on that!

APIs are overrated. They’ve helped a few sites (flickr, is a good example), but mostly it’s a waste of developer time.

Well, there is Facebook, which is the opposite of MySpace: Well designed, pages load quickly, no bands, no spam.

Myspace got bought out for <$500 million. Facebook got offered $768 million, but the owners rejected and wanted $2 billion (the creators are Harvard students). Facebook was initially restricted to college kids, but now it’s open to all.

Down with MySpace!