David Lidsky, a senior editor at Fortune Small Business, reports his Fearless Forecast for 2004 in hopes of duplicating the success of his "outlandish predictions" for 2003.
One of the questions David Lidsky asks & answers is:
"Will social networking stay cool?"
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Friendster, the leader of the social networking phenomenon, becomes withdrawn, angry, defensive, moody, and erratic, leading sites one degree away from Friendster - Tribe.net, LinkedIn, CraigsList - to stage an intervention. Friendster couldn't deal with its surging fame and became addicted to prescription painkillers it got from Rush Limbaugh when he signed up. And he had said that he was "just here to help." That enabling behavior meant Friendster never had to confront that it was never really interested in making new friends as it says on its profile. Its true desire had been to find "activity partners," if by activity you mean finding gullible young hipster wannabes to sign up for a thinly disguised dating service in the hopes of making money off of them later. The pressure to maintain the friendly illusion led it to spiral into decidedly non-friendly activities, making the gossip-page exploits of Britney Spears, Tara Reid, and Paris Hilton look like the ladies were attending ice cream socials. Friendster checks itself into the same retreat where Limbaugh sought help and returns to the Net five weeks later, blaming the media for wanting it to succeed too badly because it's different from the other dating sites.
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