100,000 Friends

By Anita Hamilton

James Cordero uses it to find musicians to perform at parties he organizes in New York City. Sharon Engelstein uses it to network with other artists like herself around the country. And Mary Janacek used it to meet her boyfriend Eric, who is a teacher in Los Angeles. It is Friendster, an online network that grew wildly this year by helping people meet new friends and lovers by connecting them to their friends' friends, and their friends too.

The site is the brainchild of former Netscape engineer Jonathan Abrams, who christened friendster.com last March. The free site has already amassed more than 3 million registered users and become a regular habit for its hordes of mostly young, tech-savvy members. "It's totally a cult," says Janacek, 25, who adds that most of her friends already use the site. Friendster seems to be a hit with the suits as well. In late October it closed $13 million in financing--a bonanza in these frugal, post-dotcom days.

Here's how it works: you sign up, post a picture and fill out a profile listing your interests and whom you'd like to meet. Then you start building your "personal network" by begging your friends to sign up, and begging them some more to invite their friends. Soon you could be connected--by up to four degrees of separation--to thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. Since you can email and browse only the profiles of people in your network, there's lots of motivation to keep signing up friends and meeting new ones through the site. "It becomes like a popularity contest," says Janacek, who has 585,766 people in her network. To reinforce the idea of community, the site encourages people to post "testimonials."

Predictably, Friendster quickly became a blind-date mecca. But it's not only for singles--and therein lies its genius. Until recently, joining a dating site came with heavy baggage rivaled perhaps only by teen tours and hair clubs. But joining Friendster is more like going to a massive party where it's easy to find your crowd. "It's networking in a very fun way," says Engelstein, 38, who is married.

There are plenty of other networking sites, such as Ryze.com Tribe.net and Meetup.com But only Friendster is so hot that it has inspired its own parody sites, including Introvertster, which bills itself as "an online community that prevents stupid people and friends from harassing you online." On Friendster itself, you'll find lots of "fakesters"--people who post false profiles of celebrities or pose as cartoon characters or even their pets. To keep things real, Abrams is diligently trying to purge the site of the fakes. He's also working on adding new features such as instant messaging between members.

Has Friendster helped Abrams, 33 and still single, find a mate? "My social life is not that great right now," he confesses. Then again, who needs more friends when you already command a whole empire of Friendsters? --By Anita Hamilton