Friendster is back... but will it's users be?

One of the largest, most popular and the best social networking site in the world of the internet, Friendster(Google Pagerank 7 and Alexa Ranking 40 as of the day this has been posted), has been offline for several days last week. After that it went active for about few hours only for most of its users to find their list of friends to be gone. Now, for someone who have loyal for some years and those who have grown in love with the site, that's something very scary!!!

A social networking site focuses on building communities of people who share interests, hobbies and activities online with each other. Many social networking websites, like Friendster, are web based and provide a many of ways for subscribers to interact, like electronic mails and instant messaging.


Friendster, according to Wikipedia, is "based on the Circle of Friends and Web of Friends techniques for networking individuals in virtual communities and demonstrates the small world phenomenon." Also stated is that "based on Alexa.com, Friendster ranks 2nd most visited website in the Philippines. It is estimated that nearly 90 percent of internet users in the Philippines have Friendster accounts. David Jones, vice president for global marketing of Friendster, said that 'the biggest percentage of users is from the Philippines, clocking in with 39 percent of the site's traffic.'"

Now, what happened? Here is the statement released by their team (which is found on the page of the full friends list):

What happened to my friends?
Currently, the number of friends in the friends list is being displayed incorrectly.

Are my friends lost permanently?
No. The data for all friend connections is intact and is not lost.

When can this be fixed?
Friendster is currently working on this problem and we hope to have this fixed within 24 hours.

Can I still add friends while the problem has not yet been fixed?
Yes, users can still add new friends and use other features of the site.

What caused this problem?
There was a building-wide power outage at the QTS / Globix data center in Sunnyvale, California, USA where Friendster’s servers are co-located, along with about 50 other customers. As a result, the memory caching of data was affected. Since Friendster has 85 million users, the cache is taking a considerable amount of time to build. Once the cache has been completely built, all friends will re-appear.

I have my full trust that their technical team can indeed fix this issue. To date, I see no problem now with one of my accounts, but on the other account of mine, I have ZERO friends!!!! All my hard work, the sufferings, the heartbreaks, the triumphs and the sacrifices of collecting those 200+ friends, all gone!!! Huhuhu! Nah, I'm just overreacting, but well, good luck to them on fixing the problem.

Will the hordes of followers of continue to patronize Friendster, even when they have to start again from scratch? Yes ofcourse. To most users, Friendster has been parts of their lives. I, myself, wouldn't consider my internet life complete without signing in to my account in the site once a day.(Thank goodness, my friends are still intact on my primary account.) Friendster has become one of the most effective way to find old friends, create new ones and stay in touch with them. Friendster is the human side of technology.