Asia? You came a few years to late... Friendster was US focused, at least until it lost. Then the probably pivoted, but I wrote about the first phase of Friendster (the one everyone in US remembers who was active online in early 2000s).
Re:Does it scale? Who cares (2011)
by nickpsecurity on Monday April 10, 2017 @12:39AM
(#14076071)
Hmm. It peaked in Asia with most users in Asia operating from Asia. You don't think the Asian focus could affect its marketing strategy for Americans? Facebook's college angle worked really well after MySpace's express yourself in cluttered pages worked before that. Im not sure Friendster understood our userbase enough to keep it.
Friendster was mostly focused on Asia plus lost a ton of users around the same time Facebook gained a ton of users. I don't think it was scaling architecture that did them in. It was the market choosing the competition for the user experience plus what their friends were on. That's for most of the world. I have no idea what contributed to their failure in Asia since I don't study that market when it comes to social media.
EDIT to add: I recall the founder did say they had serious technology problems for a few years that affected them. I'm just thinking Facebook spreading through all the colleges & moving faster on features was their main advantage.