I didn't mean to mess up the Friendster servers, I just clicked send. :(
From Bretterrill.com:
Any site that has a social component has to face the early adopter
problem. The early users on your site will determine the size, growth,
demographics, and culture of your site. As the creator of a site with
any social component, you must take this into consideration.
If I was the CEO of a company that had a social component, I'd weigh the consequences of bringing the early adopter/Techcrunch
crowd into the fold before the culture of your site has been strongly
established. Getting a few thousand early users fast could cost you
hundreds of thousands of users later on.
Below are some examples of the effect of early adopters on social networks.
Friendster - Example 1 - Demographics
Take
for example, Friendster, yesteryear's favorite social network. Most of
Friendster's audience is in the Philippines. Why? Because of one early
user (no.91) on Friendster named Carmen. She's a Filipino hypnotherapist living in San Francisco with a lot of Filipino friends.
So what's the problem? Friendster can't monetize Filipino users, but they take up a significant share of Friendster's resources.
Obviously, this observation does not speak to Friendster's downfall
which has been covered quick well elsewhere, but I find it an extremely
compelling example of the unforeseen effect early users have on a
social site.
I actually didn't invite "a lot" of Filipino friends, just some - the rest of the people I invited were from my massive personal network of friends in the Bay Area, most of whom were deeply entrenched in the first bubble - and were all "early adopters" of emerging technologies at that time. I personally think that Friendster took off in the Philippines because that's a culture where friendship and "who you know" is sometimes a more valuable currency than money. Beyond the reality of "palm-greasing" - basically everyone has an "uncle" or a "friend" or a "relative" who can help you get what you need based on nepotism, favoritism, friendship, etc., because not everyone has money. . . but if you "do me a favor. . . I'll owe you a favor. .etc." This is why friendship is important, and why a platform like Friendster, which was a "friend-collecting" service, took off so rapidly in the Philippine culture.
Thus spake Patient zero.
