Missed Wave

I remember reading about Friendster in some online article.

Friends introducing friends. It looked like a pyramid scheme. Nobody called it a social network yet. That term came later.

I thought it was interesting. I started building the same thing immediately.

Built it. Shipped it. We were on time.

But it reached no one. Our announcement was clumsy. The word "marketing" never crossed our minds. How do you spread a social network when social networks don't exist? A decent joke now. It wasn't funny then.

mixi launched. Facebook seized everything in an instant.

We had sensed the wave. We stood watching something approach beyond the horizon. My teammates all said "this is coming." We wrote the code. We shipped the product. But when the wave hit shore, we were not the ones riding it.

Ever since, I carry an unfinished feeling toward consumer services. It wasn't that we couldn't build it. We couldn't deliver it. That gap — the one technology alone cannot close — was the first lesson.