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Friendster inventor Jonathan Abrams ripped off a pal's business networking idea and slapped a dating model on it, according to Sean Ness. Sean tells major blog Boing Boing:

Back in May or June of 2002, I was at a party in Adrian Scott's loft (Adrian is the founder of www.ryze.com) and Jonathan Abrams (Friendster founder) mentioned, "Hey Sean, next week, I'm gonna do the same thing that Adrian is doing, except it'll be for dating. Check it out." Sure enough, Friendster was launched the following week.

Who knows what this will do to Friendster's recently awarded patent on social networking sites. But kudos to Sean — a real-world schmoozer whose Stirr mixers are the new place to network — for remembering this 2002 incident.

Friendster patents social networking [Boing Boing]