One of the hot sites back in 1992 was Friendster, a social network that let you connect with people around the world. What seemed like a bit of a bizarre idea at the time has gone on to become very influential: MySpace was originally conceived as a clone of Friendster, and it was clearly the proto-Facebook.
If you haven't taken a look at the site for a while, you may have imagined that the site had been closed down or mothballed - a sort of FriendsReunited situation. In fact, it's been growing healthily in unexpected places - largely south-east Asia.
There are 75m users of the site across countries such as Malaysia and the Philippines, which is what has led MOL Global - an internet company based in Kuala Lumpur, to splash out and buy it. The price hasn't been disclosed, but the FT suggests it might be around $100m.
It's not the first social network to get bought back by people in the communities who dominate it - LiveJournal, which was (perhaps even moreso than Friendster) a pioneer of so many aspects of the social web, was bought by Russian investors back in 2007.
Seven years is a long, long time on the internet and I doubt many users in the west will be sorry to see Friendster go. But it marks a neat little coda to the life of a website that is indirectly responsible for a lot (good and bad).
