Clunky Flow

It seems that Jonathan Abrams, the founder of Friendster, just can’t resist getting into a scrap. After getting into a gigantic fight with the users of Friendster (that played a major part in letting MySpace eclipse his first mover advantage) and then getting embroiled in a stand off of sorts with Tribe and Linked In. He’s now locking horns with the lawyers of Evite.

via Blogforward

Evite vs. Socialzr continued — The bad blood between Jonathan Abrams, founder of Friendster and now founder of online event service Socializr, and the lawyers at Evite, is worse than we realized. The bitterness started during the Friendster days, and worsened when Evite threatened to sue Socializr, saying the start-up had copied Evite’s templates and styles. Abrams now responds with a diatribe, saying Evite is a hypocrite and a bully.

By all right and reason, Friendster could-a and should-a become the be-all and end-all of online social networking. Instead we have an industry dominated by MySpace, Facebook and Bebo.

Abrams could do well to emulate Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. When Facebook got sued by ConnectU in 2004, Zuckerberg publicly shrugged it off with “Where there’s a hit, there’s a writ”-style rhetoric.  He has handled countless instances of headlines screaming “Facebook users revolt” by always keeping his eye on the main game and refusing to get embroiled in fighting these revolts. And funnily enough they always tend to fizzle out into nothing. I don’t know whether he follows the Tao principle of “What we resist, persists” or the homely instinct of responding to provocation with “plenty of no-notice”. But whatever he’s doing, its clearly working.

By comparision, Abrams expends huge energy into defending his patch. He’s a sucker for a fight. Just feel the time and energy he put into this diatribe against Evite. Zuckerberg on the other hand is no sucker. You’d never see him wasting his resources getting stuck in like Abrams. Zuckerberg ( who studied sociology at Harvard ) recognizes the opportunity costs of a fight. He seems to understand that most fights start just because someone wants a fight and that they’ll pick on any issue as an excuse.
I once heard someone say “Never wrestle a pig. Cause you both get dirty and only the pig will enjoy himself”. Maybe Abrams should ignore the “hypocrites and bullies” and refocus his attention on just getting on with it.