4 ms·

Ben Horowitz noted the importance of being 10x better than your competitors..friendster was better than fb, but not so much better that it made people switch.

• Evbn 14y ago
  Friendster was more popular than FB, and worked great, until they deployed a catastrophic JSP rewrite that was 10x slower than before and everyone left.
  • didip 14y ago
    Wow, didn't know that they rewrote from PHP to JSP. Got any articles/blog post to share? I'm curious.
    • adambrod 14y ago
      http://lmgtfy.com/?q=friendster+rewrite http://lmgtfy.com/?q=friendster+rewrite
  • jhowell 14y ago
    Was it Java to PHP? Seems like it's usually the other way around. This could also provide insight into their decision making procesd. http://www.quora.com/Friendster/What-were-the-key-mistakes-that-Friendster-made http://www.quora.com/Friendster/What-were-the-key-mistakes-t...
  • bromley 14y ago
    To clarify, their system was Java/JSP running on Tomcat, and they rewrote it in PHP: http://troutgirl.wordpress.com/2004/06/29/friendster-goes-php/ http://troutgirl.wordpress.com/2004/06/29/friendster-goes-ph... I found it both enjoyable and disappointing to read the many opinions shared in the comments as to why PHP is faster/better than Java (mostly), Java is faster/better than PHP, and perhaps most insidious, why both are every bit as good as each other (let's all just get along!).