Friendster was a social networking service originally based in Mountain View, California, founded by Jonathan Abrams and launched in March 2003.

[9] The company suspended services in 2015, citing "the evolving landscape in our challenging industry" and lack of engagement by the online community,[10] and ceased trading in 2018.

Friendster was founded by Canadian computer programmer Jonathan Abrams in 2002,[11] before MySpace (2003), Hi5 (2004), Facebook (2004), and other social networking sites.

Friendster was considered the top online social network service until around April 2004, when it was overtaken by MySpace in terms of page views, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

[3] Friendster's rapid success inspired a generation of niche social networking websites, including Dogster and Elfster.

[15] Friendster was then funded by Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers and Benchmark Capital in October 2003 with a reported valuation of $53 million.

Friendster's decision to stay private instead of selling to Google in 2003 is considered one of the biggest blunders in Silicon Valley, the Associated Press claims.

[21] On December 9, 2009, it was announced that Friendster had been acquired for $26.4 million by an internet company based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia named MOL Global.

[28] On October 3, 2024, the CEO of Friendster, Mike Carson, invited John Zachary Danao to be its first user to enter the early version of the site.

The company was founded in 2002 with a $12 million investment by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Benchmark Capital, and private investors.

Available languages include English, Filipino, Thai, Malay, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Chinese (both Traditional and Simplified), Japanese, Korean, and Spanish.

Friendster was the first global online social network to support Asian languages and others on a single domain so that users from around the world were able to talk to each other.

[37] Friendster has been an open site since August 2006 when it first began allowing widgets and content to be embedded in user profile pages through its developer program.

However, all the photos, messages, comments, testimonials, shoutouts, blogs, forums and groups that the users may have had in the past may no longer be part of their Friendster account.

[45] At the end of 2015 Friendster closed the website and related services, and on July 1, 2018, it officially ceased to exist as a company.