Social network Friendster has over 30 million monthly visitors worldwide, says Comscore. The problem (or perhaps the opportunity) is that just 1.7 million of those visitors are in the U.S. The vast majority, nearly 28 million, are in the Asia/Pacific region.
The company’s new CEO, Richard Kimber, is based in Sydney Australia. Friendster’s old San Francisco headquarters have been relocated as well, and the company now has a small Mountain View office for U.S. employees. Today the company announced that they’ve opened new offices in Singapore and Sydney. They have existing offices in the Philippines. A majority of the company’s employees are now in the Asia Pacific region, and at least 85% of new hires going forward will be based there.
There is a terrific monetization opportunity in the region over the long haul, but the company must be hurting for revenue today. Ad rates aren’t anywhere near comparable to the U.S. and Europe. Luckily the company has a fresh $20 million venture round to see it through.
Hey Mike,
Do you know where they are at specifically in Asia? Orkut (via Google) is huge in India (and growing in Pakistan), so I am wondering if you are referring to the far east (say China, South Korea, Philippians, etc.)
~Darnell
Philippines and Thailand.
If you ever happen to stumble across friendster, all you’ll see are profiles that make less sense than those on MySpace. Majority aren’t even in english, they’re in Tegalog and Thai.
How the hell is friendster still alive? Much less being able to get $20 mill in additional funding?
It’s Tagalog not Tegalog. And yes almost everyone here has friendster. I don’t use it anymore. It sux. I haven’t logged in for months already.
Now all countries have 2 social networks in top 10 websites. People dont mind maintaining 2 profiles in 2 networks. Interesting fact is asia, eu or us, facebook is common top 2 website in all countries.
Yeah! It’s not tegalog, It’s TAGALOG! don’t say that friendster is a less sense than MySpace because here in Friendster, peoples who have been registered here are not bitch, rude and etc. :\
Friendster is the best website among the rest! :0
yahhhh….ur rayt friendster is friendster….anu bayang friendster na yan nakakain bayan hehehehe…..kwentohan nyo ako about that things…
@darnell, friendster is strong in Asia in the countries of Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines. They maintain offices in Singapore and Philippines, the latter of which is the most important market for them due to amazingly high penetration figures.
for accurate info, u can see their june 2008 one-pager factsheet here:http://www.e27.sg/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/friendster_at_a_glance_june_2008.pdf
it used to be big in Indonesia, but now people here are using facebook. Must say good bye to Friendster but it was really good time
Mainly the Philippines, Indonesia and Indonesia although users in that last country are switching to FB lately. The profile for Friendster is indeed the advertising rates (much lower in Asia) but also the spending power of their user base (close to nothing).
It used to be pretty huge in South East Asia. But many have since switched to Facebook.
Darnell,
It’s not China where the leading SNS are QQ, 51.com, Kaixin001.com and Xiaonei
hmmm..still hawking for friendster? how much they pay u for this??
Mike,
Friendster holds patents on social networking — I’ve been waiting years now for them to sue MySpace. Now Facebook has blown up. Maybe Friendster is waiting for Facebook to IPO, then they’ll sue them both?
LOL it would never stand up…………………..
I’m from the area, Singapore specifically and they’re losing users fast. Friendster got popular here a few years after it was big in the US, and the cycle continues because users are now switching to Facebook. Next up, i’m waiting to see whether Twitter will be a big hit in the region, cos we have averagely around 2 to 3 handphones per pax in this region. SMS support for Twitter here will be extremely popular!
BestJobsOnline
http://tinyurl.com/7uj5ay
I remember when I first met J Abrams, original founder of friendster at the SF launch party. I told him his site was heaven here on earth. It was heaven because of those testimonials. I believe that was a major part that made it magical. Friends saying positive things about each other.
Well today, they’ve lost this and have converted it to simply ‘comments’. People now say meaningless things like *Ebonics accent* “What it do?”
Bring back testimonials Friendster, be true to what made you originally ‘magical’.
Most of the Malaysian switch to Facebook now!
For China, it’s all about Xiaonei.com and Kaixin001.com
And in Hong Kong FB is the #1 social network. This used to be Xanga years ago..
Friendster is still doing some interesting things. At Watercooler, while we tend to focus on Facebook and TVLoop.com, we have around 2 million of our over 30 million registered users on Friendster. So it’s a sizable population. Will be interesting to see how successful they are with monetization.
Hai
Facebook releases a new feature, and it hits the New York Times. Friendster goes down for four days without explanation, and it doesn’t even hit the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Go figure.
Soon Friendster will play catchup to FB in SEA
The Philippines may soon require a license to post content. Friendster could instantly lose the vast majority of its users.
I’m Asian and I used to be a heavy Friendster user, but I’ve obviously switched to FB. I think many mature social network users have begun switching to FB, but still maintain a Friendster account, because so many of our real-life friends still use Friendster regularly, instead of Facebook.
Well’s that my explanation anyway. But I think Friendster has done well to take advantage by using native languages in SEA to reach out to more SEAsians.
Lots of bugs and errors in Friendster:
- i still keep having “unread messages” even though i read all of them.
- very slow loading of pages.
- photo comments sometimes does not appear.
I still have an account in Friendster, but i only used it to find long lost friends, classmates. My two main social networks are Facebook and Multiply.
fb > myspace > frienster
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Friendster has huge penetration in the Philippines mainly because it had the advantage of being one of the first social networks to be launched and which Filipinos immediately become attached with. However, the challenge now is retaining that base since Facebook recently has started to become the next “in” thing.
many interesting comments…..the value of a social network is relative to the user. I have yet to find one out there that can offer to a user in his/her own language of choice….and we’re investigating that at…http://www.AsianMe.com
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i like fs because i have many friend here and very color full in my profile, while in fb i like also because in games and qa portion, add k!