Suddenly, our friends were something even better – an audience. If blogging felt like shouting into the void, posting updates on a social network felt more like an intimate conversation among friends at a pub.

Inevitably, as our list of friends grew to encompass acquaintances, friends of friends and the girl who sat behind us in seventh-grade homeroom, online friendships became devalued.

Suddenly, we knew as much about the lives of our distant acquaintances as we did about the lives of our intimates – what they’d had for dinner, how they felt about Tiger Woods and so on.

Enter Twitter with a solution: no friends, just followers.

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In case you don’t remember, Friendster was once the buzziest of start-ups. And in 2003, when Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was still in high school and Twitter’s Evan Williams was still working on Blogger, the company turned down a $30 million offer from Google (GOOG).

That deal would be well worth more than $1 billion today. But reports peg MOL’s purchase price at about $100 million.

Today, Friendster’s primary role is that of a cautionary tale for Webby start-ups: Look what happens if you miss your window. “I don’t want to be another Friendster” is a well-worn cliché that still has resonance, and I heard it just the other week while sitting in the office of an Internet CEO whose company may be on the block soon.

Looking for a more positive spin this morning? Okay, try this: Friendster’s sale represents the Internet’s power to reinvent companies. Even though no one you know uses the site, it never went away, and it has quietly amassed a reported 100 million users, almost all of them in Asia.

“Tell me why you aren’t going to be the next Friendster.”

– Venture capitalist David L. Sze’s 2006 litmus test for entrepreneurs who claimed to have the next MySpace

Yes it does. And what’s more, the social networking pioneer will reportedly be sold to a buyer in Asia by the end of the month. Price: Somewhere around $100 million.

That’s the latest word from Reuters, which says investment bank Morgan Stanley has been hired to handle the sale. No word yet on the buyer, though China-based Tencent Holdings is evidently among the bidders.

A decent exit for the venture, which created the social networking market only to forfeit it to Myspace and Facebook. Certainly, $100 million is far better than the $30 million Google (GOOG) reportedly offered for Friendster a few years back.

The job: Figure out how to turn some of Hearst’s cash into a  portfolio of digital properties. Hearst owns chunks of cable networks like Lifetime, A&E and Disney’s (DIS) ESPN; produces syndicated TV programming; and runs a newspaper syndication business, but has very little exposure to the Web. Kliavkoff’s job is to change that.

At NBC, Kliavkoff’s chief claim to fame was helping the company launch Hulu, which he ran briefly before the JV brought on Jason Kilar as CEO. At his new gig at Hearst, he says he plans on both building and buying properties and that he has some M&A candidates in mind. “I do think it’s a good time to be acquiring digital media properties, because they’re well priced compared to where they were a couple years ago,” he said.

The move may cause some head-scratching among Kliavkoff’s peers since it looks like he’ll be doing the same thing he was doing at NBC, but with a smaller group of assets.

The positive spin: He’ll have more freedom to get stuff done at Hearst, both because it’s a private company with more patience than his last gig and because he’ll have more authority. While Kliavkoff gets credit for helping NBC cobble together Hulu with News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, he didn’t have as much clout there as some of his digital peers at other big media companies enjoyed. (News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.)

The deal will bring two veterans of GE’s (GE) NBC together, though neither worked for the broadcaster at the same time. Kliavkoff came to NBC after running business development at Major League Baseball’s digital operations, in 2006; Sassa worked as a top programmer at NBC from 1997 through 2003.

Sassa later took a stab at running Friendster, the granddaddy to social-network sites like MySpace and Facebook, and briefly ran Uber.com, a bloggy/Web 2.0 start-up that shuttered last year.

Tell me why you aren’t going to be the next Friendster.”

– Venture capitalist David L. Sze’s 2006 litmus test for entrepreneurs who claimed to have the next MySpace.

If Orkut is the Facebook of Brazil, then Friendster is the Orkut of Asia. The company, which created the social- networking market only to forfeit it to Myspace and Facebook, is apparently doing quite well in Asia. So much so, that it’s used its success on that continent to secure some new venture funding and a CEO with a Google (GOOG) pedigree. In a statement proclaiming itself the No. 1 social network in Asia this morning, Friendster named Richard Kimber, Google’s Managing Director of Sales and Operations for South East Asia, as CEO. The company also said it has raised $20 million in new venture funding from DG Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, and the Founders Fund. Friendster plans to use that money to hire up and bolster its presence across Asia, specifically Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

Perhaps, we’ll see that Friendster movie yet–though I still can’t imagine a worse concept.

Which begs the question: Is Facebook nearing its saturation point? Is enthusiasm for the social-networking phenom finally wearing off? Have we all been spammed by the ironically named “Funwall” one time too many? Are the site’s privacy issues finally taking their toll? Or are its zombified members too busy seeking human flesh to bother updating their profiles?

Or were they simply on winter holiday?

That last scenario seems the most obvious explanation. December and January are the months at issue here. And Nielsen’s figures show that there are 712% more Facebook users than a year ago. Still, this is the first drop the firm has recorded in Facebook’s user numbers in the U.K. since the site became large enough to track. There wasn’t a similar drop in usage last year. Or the year prior. So maybe there is something more here. The early beginnings of a long-term erosion, perhaps?

“One month of falling audiences doesn’t spell the decline of Facebook or social networking,” said Nielsen’s Alex Burmaster. “However, most of the leading social networks are less popular in the U.K. than they were a year ago. It was inevitable that early growth rates couldn’t be sustained and the larger networks have been plateauing over the last few months.”

Seems the leading social networks to which Burmaster refers were also less popular in the U.S. According to the latest stats from comScore, Facebook attracted 33.9 million unique visitors stateside in January–down 2% percent from 34.7 million in December. That’s a decline of approximately 800,000 users. Again, this drop could also be chalked up to Seasonal Facebook Defection Disorder. Or not. After all, it’s not like we haven’t seen this sort of thing before. Remember Friendster?

UPDATE: Facebook disputes Nielsen’s metrics. “The number of users for Facebook continues to climb in the U.K.,” the company said. “Our internal monthly active user numbers rose between December and January in the U.K. and are now at more than 8.3 million. Facebook tracks active monthly users, rather than registered users or unique visitors. Active users reflect those who have used the site in the past 30 days.”

OpenSocial, as Google has named it, is a set of common APIs (application programming interfaces) that will enable developers to write applications for a broad range of Web sites and services without any individual customization. Think of it as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s “social graph” but writ large.

And while some might smirk at OpenSocial’s initial roster of participants–LinkedIn, hi5, Ning, Friendster, Plaxo and Google’s own “big in Brazil” social network Orkut–it does include a few big names: business software makers Salesforce.com and Oracle. Oh, and Google. Which, as TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld points out, already has much of the critical mass it needs to push this effort forward: “Google already has so much data on you, depending on how many Google apps you already use. It just needs to bring everything together. … Over time, Google will connect all of these together in different ways, along with data about you from other social services across the Web, and give developers access to the social layer tying all of these apps together underneath. The real killer app for Google is not to turn Orkut into a Facebook clone. It is to turn every Google app into a social application without you even noticing that you’ve joined yet another social network.”

OpenSocial, as Google has named it, is a set of common APIs (application programming interfaces) that will enable developers to write applications for a broad range of Web sites and services without any individual customization. Think of it as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s “social graph” but writ large.

And while some might smirk at OpenSocial’s initial roster of participants–LinkedIn, hi5, Ning, Friendster, Plaxo and Google’s own “big in Brazil” social network Orkut–it does include a few big names: business software makers Salesforce.com and Oracle. Oh, and Google. Which, as TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld points out, already has much of the critical mass it needs to push this effort forward: “Google already has so much data on you, depending on how many Google apps you already use. It just needs to bring everything together. … Over time, Google will connect all of these together in different ways, along with data about you from other social services across the Web, and give developers access to the social layer tying all of these apps together underneath. The real killer app for Google is not to turn Orkut into a Facebook clone. It is to turn every Google app into a social application without you even noticing that you’ve joined yet another social network.”

Like a beloved old car with faults that its owner no longer notices, Evite’s familiarity often masks its rough user interface. Its Web pages are littered with advertisements — many that are obnoxiously intrusive.

Social-networking users are irked that Evite doesn’t do enough to incorporate their favorite Web sites, leaving fans of MySpace.com and Facebook feeling like the Evite creation process is a bothersome step out of their online community of friends.

Still others complain that since it was launched in 1998, Evite hasn’t done enough to improve its user interface and hasn’t added many significant features that take advantage of so-called Web 2.0 technologies, which allow publishers to integrate more functions onto one Web page rather than forcing users to refresh or change pages to accomplish tasks.

This week, I tested MyPunchbowl.com (www.mypunchbowl.com) by Punchbowl Software, a competitor to IAC/InterActiveCorp.’s Evite (www.evite.com). Both programs are free. Though MyPunchbowl was introduced only in January, it has a clean interface with fewer ads than Evite; in fact, MyPunchbowl invitees never see ads. It doesn’t integrate with social-networking sites such as MySpace.com, Friendster or Facebook, but it does use message boards, as well as photo and video sharing through Flickr.com and YouTube.com, respectively.

MyPunchbowl is taking on the more-established Evite site

MyPunchbowl isn’t perfect: its invitation preview button is buried, leaving the host wondering what exactly will be sent out to the guest. Its templates are limited to around 100, according to the company, while Evite’s templates total roughly 800. But all in all, MyPunchbowl offers a good mix of just enough and not too many features. It is approachable for the tech-savvy and nontechies alike.

Sensing competition from MyPunchbowl, Socializr (an Evite meets social-networking application founded by the maker of Friendster) and others, Evite.com has stepped up its game. Hotel suggestions can now be made in a Hotels.com section on invitations, and photos can be uploaded for post-party sharing. In August Evite plans to introduce an online party-supply store, and in October it will offer a mobile component. The company is even testing new, animated versions of its invitations.

I first played around with Evite to refresh my memory. I focused on its real purpose — creating an invitation. This process is started by choosing a theme, like “BBQ,” then picking a design to go with your theme. A host must then add details about the event for guests, and then enter guests’ emails. I found a BBQ invitation design in the new animated style, but couldn’t figure out how to see what its animation looked like before I sent it, which was frustrating. When I brought this to Evite’s attention, it acknowledged the bug. Hosts can easily see previews of regular invitations as well as the exact email that the guest will receive.

Evite allows for personalization in its Reply Style section. This section lets the host create party-related categories for responses rather than just yes, no and maybe. An invitation for a night of card-playing might, for example, categorize the yes responses as “I’m All In.” Evite responses are a big reason people like using it, as it lets all guests see who is coming and what they said in their response.

The party-planning section in Evite was introduced in the past year. It includes some useful tools, such as a drink calculator (to estimate how much alcohol you’ll need for an event), a party checklist and event-planning ideas. I used one tool called the party budget estimator to see if it guessed the right amount spent on a bridal shower I co-hosted, and it was pretty accurate.

MyPunchbowl.com tries to distinguish itself by offering start-to-finish steps for the event’s host. This procedure begins with Pick a Date, so that you can offer guests a few potential suggestions to see which one they’d prefer. Guests can be distinguished as VIPs, helping you give their vote more merit, and you can tell guests the date you prefer. Once a date is chosen, a Save the Date email is sent out, with a message board on which guests can start chatting about the event. The full invitation follows this, followed by the After Party message board on which photos and videos can be shared via Flickr.com and YouTube.

Evite also offers to send out Save the Date cards before an event, and it incorporates Pick a Date options in the actual invitation itself.

I got started on MyPunchbowl without signing up for an account, which was a treat. I got halfway through the invitation creation process before deciding I liked it enough to sign up. I started an account by opening a small window in my current screen, entering my name, email and password and continued making the invitation right where I left off.

One glaring problem with MyPunchbowl was that I couldn’t figure out how to preview my invitation before I sent it to guests. I ended up crossing my fingers and sending the invitation out anyway. Later, someone from the company showed me an obscure preview link on the bottom left side of a page, but this didn’t cut it. MyPunchbowl says it knows this is a big problem, and that it intends to fix this and other problems in the next few months.

I also noted that the text box where I typed a message to guests didn’t offer various fonts or colors, nor did it offer to spell-check my message; Evite offers all of these things. And responses on MyPunchbowl’s invitations are limited to yes, no or remind me later. If guests want to respond in more detail, they are directed to a message board. Evite users may not adapt to the message-board method.

I was able to instantly add a Google map to the MyPunchbowl invitation at the press of a button, which is helpful. MyPunchbowl also gives users a chance to more tightly control guest responses, such as requesting that guests respond a certain number of days prior to the party.

Change and variety are welcome for electronic invitations. After all, it makes sense that a hip host would want to be on the cutting edge, starting with the invitation. MyPunchbowl requires a bit of a learning curve and doesn’t have as many extra features as Evite. For people who might not understand the idea of MyPunchbowl’s message boards, Evite will remain the favorite. But the younger competitor’s cleaner interface coupled with its plans for improvements this summer might make it an appealing option for planning your next get-together.

• Email: MossbergSolution@wsj.com