In the days when adding friends, poking and surroundings a attribute position were only a remote flicker in Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg's teenage eye, Friendster was already personification the social-networking game.
Founded in 2002 by Jonathan Abrams and Ross MacKinnon - two P.C. programmers working in Silicon Valley, California - Friendster detonate onto the stage in Mar 2003.
It was, Mr Abrams was rumoured to have said, a great way to encounter girls.
By the autumn of 2003 it had thick with 3 million users and feel safe millions of dollars value of investment.
Mr Abrams was bearing onto the covers of tip magazines and appeared on late-night US speak shows.
MySpace, Bebo and Facebook were still nowhere to be seen.
Friendster, with its hurriedly flourishing userbase, had the greatest headstart in a race that would advance to conclude the decade.
It is a race Friendster finished up losing. Eight years on from its Silicon Valley beginnings, the website hardly resembles its initial self.
A fibre of program glitches and slow opening tormented the site, and, as competitors loomed, the number of active users plummeted.
In the years that followed, many of the smarts at the back Friendster's early success changed on to other projects - maybe ruing early longed for chances to sell up to Google.
And as caller figures go on to dwindle, the future appears dour is to godfather of outrageous amicable networks.
There may be a turn in the story yet, though. In December 2009 Friendster was acquired by MOL Global, Asia's heading "online remuneration solutions provider".
While Friendster has all but left from the radio detector in the US, its take-up in Middle East is still strong, and MOL Global is vigilant on creation that count.
The site says 90% of its whole traffic comes from from the continent, and Friendster is neck and neck with Facebook in countries similar to Malaysia and the Philippines.
But the firm cannot rest on its laurels - it schooled that doctrine the hard way when, according to the New York Times, Friendster scoffed at early incarnations of MySpace and Bebo.
It is right away anticipating its ultimate product launch will be the beginning of a rarely essential resurgence.
Friendster Games will pull on the large success of Farmville, a Facebook-based amicable diversion that allows players to erect and sustain a farm.
Over 50 million people fool around Farmville every month - many spending real-world allowance to be able to get hold of "Farm cash" to outlay on their farms.
It is a model that excites Ganesh Kumar Bangah, MOL Global's CEO.
"If you'd asked me 3 years ago either Farmville, a diversion where you can go and primarily erect your plantation by shopping cows etc would be really popular, we would say you were crazy," he told BBC World Service's Jennifer Pak.
He estimates that the amicable gaming attention will be value $5 billion by 2012, and Friendster wants a large square of it.
"Just because Friendster proposed first and mislaid marketplace share to a competitor, it doesn't meant it cannot re-engineer itself, or re-evolve itself, and be successful again," Mr Ganesh insists.
The site offers a apartment of games that may be played - similar to Farmville - directly inside of the browser.
Titles add Blow 'Em up in Boomz (the site's many renouned title, existing in Chinese only) and Lady Popular, a diversion that invites players to "create your own Lady" and confirm make-up, clothing and so on.
All the games have a categorically Asian feel - with visuals desirous by Japanese anime and a wave to role-playing genres - and are engineered to urge on a local feel to the site's community.
Alongside the gaming bid is a new song portal assisting local eccentric acts publicize and share their work. Somewhat ironically, it mimics the draw close MySpace adopted as it defeated Friendster in the US.
Yet with more and more of its key userbase relocating over to Facebook, all this may simply not be enough.
Indeed, only months after MOL Global acquired Friendster, it moreover went in to partnership with Facebook to supply the program at the back its Facebook Credits system.
Ashley Norris from amicable media group Sutro Digital believes Facebook will never be battered when it comes to amicable gaming, but suggests that Friendster's new enhancements could help it keep existing, profitable, users.
"It goes back to calm being the king, and calm being the key," he said.
"If you can supply lots of local content, you give people a convincing reason to advance back to your site. Gaming's a component of it - but it could be music, television, video."
Social media researcher Chris Leong says Friendster will have burden attracting new users as a outrageous number of Farmville's fans would not actively hunting for games to play.
"The reason why they actively fool around games is since Facebook. Because a few of their friends invited their friends on Facebook and they come about to cling to around on Facebook for cinema and for other kinds of position updates - that's why they admire the games that they play."
This chimes loyal for Sarah Skidmore, a 22-year-old self-confessed Farmville drug dependant from the UK.
"I found it by friends on Facebook. we fool around it because it's giveaway and it's the arrange of diversion you must be keep forthcoming back to.
"Facebook is a site we go on every day any way - so it's only simpler there."
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