Execution is everything

“Who viewed my profile,” a LinkedIn feature you may be familiar with was actually invented, perhaps in desperation, by Friendster. The feature was one of many hail mary attempts to survive at a time in which Friendster was failing to catch up with younger companies MySpace and The Facebook.

The first social network came up with a few things. They had 7 patents. Lots of ideas, and incredible potential — but ultimately — it failed to execute. Multiple CEOs, scalability challenges, inconsistent strategies, politics and other issues led to the network’s demise.

Facebook now owns those 7 Friendster patents, as well as a bunch of patent applications. It bought them for $40 million. By 2015, Facebook was making that same amount in revenue — every day.

Facebook was not the first social network. It had the right vision, the right strategy, and the right execution.

By the way, you can’t find out who viewed your profile on Facebook.

Meanwhile, Friendster is not even mentioned on Facebook’s wikipedia page.