Goodbye Friendster

Long before there was twitter and facebook, there was friendster. Long before we're eager to read the comments in our shoutouts, there were testimonials. There were glittering texts. Skins to match your mood.

Can you still remember them?

I still can.

I always thought friendster is the be all and end all of social network. Then came facebook and it proved me wrong. I was one among the many guilty people who tried creating an account in facebook, hated it at first, logged again, played the games - until one day I just switched to facebook and never looked back.

It all seemed history until I read the news from yahoo that friendster will be doing a major website reformat and it may delete old photos and files. The news tugged a little nostalgia in me. I suddenly recalled how I used to spend hours giving face-lift to my page. From skin color to text fonts, to whose celebrity face will grace on my page, to what will I say on "about me".

There was no wall where you can vent yet. There was no friend suggestions. No notification whatsoever but I can manage to connect with my friends, peek at their profile , see the photos, find out who commented - very much like today. Except that facebook made it a lot easier. And convenient.

As you know, convenience always have the edge.

I took the time to revisit friendster after a long time. I must say, I miss the old friendster. It's pretty much like facebook now where you can see updates from your friends and you can post shoutouts. Then I made a round down testimonials. I read each one them barely noticing that those were written 4-5 years ago by my friends. Some I couldn't figure who because of their aliases. Some I lost contact with. Old friends. Old colleagues. Old times. I couldn't help but smile.

When I was done reading the testimonials, I realized they all said one thing about me : BITCHY hahahaha! Yeah I could be mean at times but I don't bitch other people just for the heck of it. I just have a strong personality. Agree or not but that's it! :)

I browsed at my old photos too. They are silent witnesses of how much I changed over the years. Errrr... make it : how much I gained (in lbs) over the years. Hahaha!

I don't know if this is some kind of publicity fair on friendster's part just to create a hype and bring their old "followers" back to their website. Whatever it is, I can't deny the fact that this social network became part of my teens. I have so many memories imprinted on each one of the photos, on every single word of my friends' testimonials. There's so much of me in there...