Since ceding social network dominance to Myspace in 2004, Friendster has gone through massive reorganizations, countless consultants and three CEOs. Even a Kleiner partner fell due in part to his mismanagement of the company at the board level. However, under the current leadership of Kent Lindstrom, one of the founders (and CFO until taking over early this year), Friendster is making a comeback of sorts.
It turns out the key to making the social network work was pretty simple: creating a scalable architecture that served pages fast, and allowing users a degree of freedom in creating their pages (instead of a rigid hierarchy that leaves all pages looking more or less the same). The result? A steady and impressive growth in page views since Kent took over.
So it isn’t unexpected that Friendster would copy yet more features of long time rival Myspace. And instant messaging is next. Myspace launched an IM client (Windows only) earlier this month, to generally positive reviews.
Friendster’s version, which is in development, will be web chat, not a downloadable client (”Meebo” style). I am getting conflicting reports on this: one source says that the service will be created in partnership with Los Angeles based Userplane. Another says its being built offshore by the company itself. Either way, I have early, rough screen shots of the product, below, and not much more information.
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It’s looking very meebo. You know the funny thing is, I didnt even know myspace had an IM client and if you click on the chat icon on someones page, it has been an error for as long as I can remember. So this is something friendster could really get a gain on myspace for.
It would be handy if this stayed with the page as you surfed other pages as well. It would turn the whole community into something a whole lot more live - where myspace relies on email style communcation (not taking into consideration the windows IM client which I wouldnt even count).
i agree
Hmmmm… Friendster has IM before Myspace. The service is limited to US though because I have to change my country profile to US before I can access friendster IM service. MoBS is way cooler though.
Thats a reasonable approach, much better than offering an IM client which is why MySpace IM will fail…http://www.degardener.com/2006/05/11/why-myspace-messenger-will-fail/
I’m the Country Manager for Friendster Philippines (Pusit.com, Inc.) and I want to make some clarifications.
1) Copying MySpace: in actuality, Friendster Mobs has been on the drawing board for a while (and way before any leak/announcement of a MySpace IM). Coding a scalable web-based IM system, well, ain’t easy.
2) A web-based chat service had already been offered by Friendster in certain locations (not PH however) in partnership with Userplane for over a year. You can check it out for all you US Friendster users by clicking on Chat in the nav bar.
3) Friendster Mobs was born out of the idea that many overseas Filipino workers had Friendster accounts and wanted to stay in touch synchronously (and asynchronously) with friends and family (who also have Friendster accounts) in the Philippines
4) The main component of Friendster Mobs is actually not the web-based chat but the built in mobile SMS experience for PH-based mobile phones.
Example: let’s say a nurse in California wants to send a message to her brother in Manila. She would just log on to Friendster Mobs, click on mobile and automatically, this would be routed to her brothers registered mobile phone. If the brother responds, she get the response back on her chat window. This is very different from the Userplane experience which is purely web2web.
5) Friendster Mobs takes advantage of the built-in overseas Filipino and PH-based users in their community and extends it to synchronous communication with a built-in premium SMS business model.
I hope this clarifies some things.
Terence
terpua [at] friendster [dot] com
It’s a wise move for Friendster to invest in infrastructure, though I’m not quite sure a wholesale appropriation of Myspace will do anything other than add more noise to the signal.
About IM…well, we already have IM. We’ve got AIM, Y!, MSN, Gtalk - all services that have network effect working for them. If Friendster’s IM client was Jabber-based (and why wouldn’t it be) this could make sense. The notion of trying to pull people away from their “critical” services (a critical service being a desktop application used frequently - web browser, IM client) is a tough proposition. I doubt Friendster wants to do this - they just want to add chatting inside the service; but if the chatting is a walled-garden play, I think they’re missing out on real opportunity.
If I were Friendster, I’d really work on finding and exploiting an available market segment. Let’s face it - there are plenty of people who don’t feel entirely comfortable on MySpace or Facebook. Network effects in social networking are big - but as Facebook proves, we’re really mostly interested in the world directly around us. If Friendster is doing a complete wash of its brand, perhaps they should sit around and think about who these underserved markets are. Friendster is still a household name to late twentysomethings - there’s value there.
Fred,
Friendster Mobs will not be walled-garden play…
See my post here:
http://pusit.com/blog/2006/05/.....uddy-list/
Terence
Not so sure about ’since Kent took over’ (good story as that makes). Take a look at the chart for a set of social spaces - looks like it’s just an industry effect as MySpace tops out, Friendster doesn’t beat hi5, sad Orkut is doing better, Bebo is losing. Interesting times.
http://www.alexaholic.com/www......w.bebo.com
Meebo is the coolest thing ever! I use it whenever I’m not near a computer with trillian.
I’ve tried myspace’s IM a few times and never got it to work.
Quite interesting. So, quoting Terrance “If the brother responds, she get the response back on her chat window. This is very different from the Userplane experience which is purely web2web.” — would that mean a friendster client needs to be downloaded onto the mobile just like Yahoo which also allows you to see the friends list and their status?
Regards,
Nag @
Startups.in
Like Fred (comment 5) said, it would be well smart of them to make the IM jabbercompatible (shouldn’t be to hard. everyone could have the jabberID username@friendster.com) or make it even jabber at all. Everything else will be suboptimal. to fight someone superior as myspace you have to use every network you can. jabber would be a beginning. (google understood that, regarding gtalk and the IM-market)
I think everyone starts to make preconceptions about anything new with Friendster. If you have taken a look at Friendster lately, you’ll notice a really great service that has gone through its growing pains. The Social Networking game is still in an early stage, and Friendster could make a VERY strong comeback. The recent traffic surge means something. Yes, Alexa can be flawed, but their Alexa reach dominates Facebook, who has recently opened up to a larger demographic. Everyone thinks that in order to be a profitable, healthy, and good social networking service that you have to kill MySpace or go bust. Guess what? You don’t. As for Friendster Mobs, I’m glad to see this. As Terence said, it is NOT easy making a scaleable web IM client. the fact that the buddy list is portable helps too. Lastly, trends that work in the Philippines don’t exactly coordinate to trends that work in the US. With Friendster’s large international userbase, it is best for everyone to start looking outside the box as to whether something will or won’t work.
Sincerely,
Jason L. Baptiste
CEO of Viral Ventures, parent company of uGather.com
I’m not really sure how much value an IM client is going to add to friendster. Like other people stated there are already a ton of other dominating IM clients on the market.
The behavior of most people is to meet someone on a social network, get their AIM (or Y!, MSN messanger) and add it to that client.
Bottom line, this is not a feature that will attract more users or traffic which should be the primary goal of friendster at this point.
-Brian Balfour
http://www.SocialDegree.com
Shout Central has been doing this for months and with our upcoming version 2 release it will blow that stuff away.
Everyone is just hashing and rehashing the same stuff.
http://www.shoutcentral.com
The clarification is correct - Userplane provides web-based IM for US Friendster users currently and are working on expanding the communication platform to other areas for Friendster!
We look forward to working with Terence and his team on the delivery of Friendster’s IM to Pusit.com : )
Sure this IM will add value to Friendster. It will help proliferate mobile usage of the site/brand in the Phillipines. (Which is already huge.)
There is no sizable ad market in the PI, so mobile is the only way to make money. 90% of Friendster’s traffic now comes from the Phillipines, Malaysia, and other Southeast Asian countries. The recent growth in page views is nice, but its non-US traffic and mostly non-monetizable traffic–non-monetizable UNLESS you move to the cel phone, which is where you can make a little bit.
Friendster’s biggest problem is that its only strength is in internet markets without a lot of money (southeast asian). It’ll never be a big business unless it can regain the US market, which MySpace took over.
Clarification: Both MySpace and Friendster have used Userplane for their web-based IM for over 2 years. MySpace used it first, then Friendster followed. MySpace’s web-based IM is currently disabled while proliferates its downloadable IM.
hi.
My problem with friendster is that it is going to be the next asianavenue.com. I dont see how friendster mobs would help friendster in anyway because as people said there are IMs. Why do you have to worry about IM when your infrastructure is not scalable. It takes 400 % larger than myspace to open a page in friendster.
Nag@Startups
No need to download anything. Everything is SMS-based. They just hit reply as if they were responding to a “normal” SMS.
Terence
Why is everyone using this new web chat and not using a flash front end with jabber/xmpp?
whats the benefit?
Is Friendster back from Hades?
Top Ten Social Networking Sites (NWS, GOOG, MSFT)
http://internetstockblog.com/article/10720
Google Trends: myspace, friendster, facebook, orkut, xanga
http://www.google.com/trends?q.....p;date=all
Friendster should be focusing on building mobile functionality - based on their experience in the Phillipines that’s the one area that could give them the edge.
Looks pretty interesting, but definitely won’t be the app to overtake MySpace, FaceBook, etc..
I wonder how many are here to try to pump Friendster act II. The burn rate must be getting some alarm bell off.
Thanks Terence. But I think it’d be nice if it’d allow me to view all my “friendsters” using my mobile..
Regards,
Nag @
Startups.in
What is “Friendster Mobs” all about? Because according to one post published in 2004 on the Business 2.0 blog, they should already have one. VoIP-enable. And on its web site of the IM provider, the info is already the same. More info here.
premium SMS business model -> sounds good
Now this is something interest. Being a fairly casual user of Friendster I can now look forward to keeping in touch with people I know through Friendster, instead of having people populate my IM list, many who I never speak with at all.
I do hope that it’s AJAX-based; I’m not in the mood for any downloadable or Java-based clients.
Actually, I’m not in the mood for ANY new IM system at all. I’m swamped with them already. But hey, who knows, this might be useful.
hi how are u
u have a ym
Not to get on a soap box for Friendster, but I think it is a great move by them. They do have a bigger following than many of the fringe, wannabe social networking sites. If they build some better functionality into the site, they might re inspire users to actually stay on Friendster. I agree with Wan about the AJAX-based IM. This may seem like a shameless plug, but I have been intrigued by this new site http://www.lostcherry.com/john101, a niche social networking site. They have an IM called the shoutbox that is AJAX based and very easy to use. I think these guys are leading the charge in this area. I did check out AOL’s new networking site as well. As lame as AOL is, they are putting a lot of time an energy into their site. At the end of the day, Friendster has a bigger user base. If they position it well, they might actually save themselves.
i dont understnd how to join as chater mania in friendster ……can u hel me ..
whats up
i dont know and dont understand how to start to use friendster mobs/chater mania….can you help me…….and tell me how????…pliz……
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006.....at-coming/
wala lang
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gago
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hi u guys
Helow mga frnds
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hi pwd mag hingi nang ka chaye mate