Posts Tagged ‘Friendster’

Friendster is All the Rage as it Goes Asian

When Friendster was first launched in 2002, the site seems to be one of the rapid rise of social networking sites in the United States.However, when users began to migrate to other larger social networks, namely Facebook and Myspace, Friendster can only be remembered by Americans as just another run-of-the-mill social website.

While the success of Friendster in the U.S. is a ‘one-time hit, so to speak, the reality is that the site had not completely pulled down.The only difference is that Friendster caters to a more global market, rather than focusing on just focused on the American public. Kent Lindstrom, president of Friendster, states that “most of the world outside the U.S.”

The company, which operates one million in venture capital, remains confident, despite the severe competition from social networking sites in Asia. According to rankings released by Web tracker Alexa, Friendster was considered the top social networking site in Southeast Asia. It is believed that the Philippines and Indonesia substantially contribute to the increasing success of Friendster. In fact, in the Philippines alone, three of the five Internet surfers at least a Friendster account. Same web tracker indicates that the site is the second most visited Internet domain in Singapore and Malaysia. General, Asia contributes to 89% of web traffic to Friendster, as opposed to only 17% coming from residents of North America.

Friendster’s popularity in Asia, the company had not planned initially, probably due to the geography and demography. However, the location of their new office in San Francisco, when the company moved from Mountain View, paved the way for Asians about Friendster. When the Asian-American Californians in the area started inviting friends and relatives in Asia, the social network rapidly expanded. And although the non-English version of the site was not initially available and in fact, has recently, Friendster was able to millions of users across the Pacific to draw.

Friendster was an advantage, not only for business but also for the users. Take Karen Kong, a Malaysian pop singer who drew two million viewers right after her concert video on their profile page is loaded.

A term called “Friendster syndrome” was even a widespread term for users who are hooked into browsing their friends’ profiles and checking out web pages and blogs of people in their extended network. And now that Friendster has developed multilingual capabilities that enable subscribers worldwide on a site (unlike Myspace), it is very possible that Friendster will continue as the number in Asia is a friendly gathering place.