Last month, internet archeologist,
Dr. Maxwell Frey,
stumbled upon the perfectly preserved ruins
of an online community called Friendster.
Dr. Frey good morning to you.
- Good morning.
Dr. Frey, tell us about this
amazing discovery of yours.
Well, it was called Friendster, and at its
peak it was a vibrant social network
with more than 5
- 5
- That's right.
But then, out of the blue,
the civilization just ended
and the site was completely abandoned.
- Strange.
One day Friendster users were posting a
seemingly endless stream of bulletins about
awesome parties and cool shows
and then nothing.
That is so eerie.
- Total silence.
Today the ruins of the site remain
perfectly preserved as they were
at the time of Friendsters demise,
sometime around mid to late 2
Wow, their lives just come to a complete
stop like a fly trapped in amber.
Exactly.
It's really beautiful.
You can see how much work went into it.
Now you just made this amazing discovery
just by looking through an
old desktops browser history?
That's right.
And as soon as I entered the site,
I knew I was the first human being to lay
eyes on those pages in many, many years.
There must be so much to learn
from the remnants of this site.
There is. Evidence suggests Friendster
users or Friends were a simple people,
spending most of their time
gathering the names of bands
to display on large ornamental
favorite music lists.
Oh, I'm getting chills just looking at it.
Brand names were important to them
just as they are to us today,
but they revered something called
Six Feet Under as well as The Shins.
They also prize photos
of themselves drinking.
Everyone looks so happy.
- Such a mystery.
So what happened to Friendster?
Well, no single explanation
is universally excepted,
but some of my colleagues believe that
a computer virus may have wiped out
a large portion of the Friendster users,
and then the rest fled their accounts
out of fear.
Others believe that Friendster was only
meant to exist temporarily
to fill a void left by another mysterious
civilization known as ALL,
or perhaps AOL.
Now, if the public is interested,
they can go visit the ruins of the website
at www.friendster.com .
All we ask is that they don't
alter any content.
They leave the site just as they found it.
Of course. Well, thank you Dr. Frey
for being our guest.
Thank you Dr. Frey.
- Thank you. It was my pleasure.
Coming up, a new study
has linked heart disease
to eating like a big, fat, disgusting pig
that no one could love.
Still ahead this hour:
How to punch up your boring will.
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