Andy Chase

I re-joined Friendster a couple of days ago at a friend's invitation. The last time I signed up I thought it was interesting, but never really knew what to do with it.

This time around there's some new functionality, but there's also at least one big huge flash ad on EVERY SINGLE PAGE. Multiple ads on most.

One thing that's already driving me nuts is the means of communication; when somebody on Friendster sends me a message, I get a big, bloated html email (with a big ad at the bottom, of course) telling me somebody sent me a message.

They have my email address.

They have the message that somebody left for me.

They could save me the trouble and just send the actual message to my email address. I know they're not going to do that because they want me to go to the Friendster web site and look at their crappy advertising.

I've been spoiled by Flickr, where they understand that the best way to keep people coming back to the site is to make it clean, easy to use, and a pleasure to surf around.

Tagged:

• friendster
• webapps
• flickr