Social Networking Watch: News on the Social Networking and Social Media Industry

Friendster Goes Live as Social Gaming Network

PC MAG - July 3 - Friendster has gone live as a social gaming portal. The new Friendster uses Facebook Connect; users can either sign in via their own Friendster logins or use Facebook Connect. Friendster was acquired by MOL late last year, and the company warned users that their data would be deleted by May 31, when it would be refocused on "entertainment and fun". That beta version of the gaming site has now expired, and the site has been re-opened to all.

by Mark Hachman
See full article at PC Mag

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Friendster Deletes All User Profiles Today

MOUNTAIN VIEW PATCH - May 31 - Friendster will delete all of its user profiles today in a move to refocus its efforts on a gaming-hub based in Asia. The social networking site was founded in 2003 and at its peak had 115 million users. Friendster, as well as MySpace, had lost their ability to compete in the social networking space dominated by Facebook.

by Rachel Stern & Amy Berryhill
See full article at Mountain View Patch

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Friendster To Erase All User Photos, Blogs And More On May 31

TECH CRUNCH - Apr 26 - First launched in 2002, Friendster attracted tens of millions of users over the years, but it never quite grew into the online juggernaut it could have been. Having raised close to $50M, Friendster was acquired by Malaysian payments company MOL Global at the end of 2009 for a reported $40M. Today, in a message to registered members, the company is asking all users to install a custom app to export all their profile data, as most of it will be unequivocally deleted on May 31, 2011. Friendster is making the changes under the guise of reinventing themselves as a service focused on “entertainment and fun”.

by Robin Wauters
See full article at Tech Crunch

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What Happened To Friendster

BBC.CO.UK - Dec 15 - Friendster never made an impact in Europe. But this was the social network that promised to be the next big thing on the web, before first MySpace and then Facebook ran off with that title. In fact, it grew so fast that it fell over, its technology unable to cope with the surge in demand. Within a year it had attracted millions of users, lots of excited media coverage, and had won big-name VC backing. Then Abrams fell out with his backers and there were huge technical problems. "The site barely worked for two years," is how the founder puts it. He left, and has since been involved in a number of other start-ups. Friendster is still around, advertising itself as a social gaming platform, and apparently enjoying a measure of popularity in Asia, where the majority of its users are now based. FULL ARTICLE @ BBC.CO.UK

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Friendster Explains Monetization Plans

ZDNET ASIA - Sep 27 - As part of its efforts to better monetize its services, Friendster's key areas of growth are social networks, social games and location-based services (LBS). A Malaysia-based payments company, MOL acquired Friendster last December. MOL is already involved in e-payments and micro-transactions for online games. The company processes~60M transactions a year with an annual payment volume of over $200M. FULL ARTICLE @ ZDNET ASIA

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New Friendster Owner Plans To Remake Site Around Games

PAID CONTENT - Aug 17 - Friendster, the long-time social network, which was purchased by Asian payment company MOL Global late last year, is moving away from its roots as a general social network. MOL Global CEO Ganesh Bangah  said that his company is planning to transform the site into a “social gaming portal,” which will feature hundreds of games. FULL ARTICLE @ PAID CONTENT

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Facebook Buys $40 Million Worth Of Social Networking Patents

MASHABLE - Aug 5 - Facebook has acquired a broad set of patents on social networking covering the basic functions of just about any social app, ranging from friend lists to the news feed. The patents were acquired from Friendster, which has been awarded a wide array of social networking patents over the last decade. According to VentureBeat, there are 18 patents in all; GigaOm reports the price of the portfolio was $40M. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE

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Friendster Valued At $26.4 Million In Sale

TECH CRUNCH - Dec 15 - We’ve got more details on the Friendster acquisition announced last week. The total purchase price paid was $39.5M. But lots of stuff was deducted, totalling $13M and change:
- $3.7M in secured debt
- $2.5M in cash in Friendster’s bank account
- $2.1M paid to Friendster CEO Richard Kimber
- $1.4M to other Frienster executives
- $3.4M to Morgan Stanley and other third parties (lawyers, escrow agents, etc.)
FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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MOL Global Snaps Up Friendster

TECH CRUNCH - Dec 9 - MOL Global, a Malaysian payments company, has purchased Friendster. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed but we’ve heard that the purchase price is around $100M. MOL Global and Friendster already had a partnership power the payments ecosystem of the Friendster Wallet and its payments platform. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Friendster To Be Sold

REUTERS - Dec 4 - Friendster will be sold to an Asian buyer by the end of December for ~$100M. Morgan Stanley will handle the deal.  Friendster, which predates Facebook and MySpace was founded in 2002. But it quickly lost ground to other social networks in the US. Friendster is now mostly used in Asia where more than half of its registered 100M users are from.  TechCrunch Friendster at $210 million in July.  Friendster had turned down a $30 million buyout offer from Google Inc six years ago. The firm rebranded on Friday to target a younger audience and will shift its revenue focus from advertising to micro-transactions. FULL ARTICLE @ REUTERS

Mark Brooks: Friendster rose to power in 2003. It was enjoying a boom by mid-2003 signing up 20,000+ people a day. The site was seeded in Silicon Valley from founder, Jonathan Abrams and his friends. Here's my interview with initial angel, and then the CEO of Friendster, Kent Lindstrom. Jonathan Abrams went on to run a restaurant in San Francisco, and start-up Socializr. (Full Disclosure: I worked for Friendster in 2003 as Director of Events and PR... before going to the dark side and working for FriendFinder, a truly profitable company at the time.)

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Friendster Gets A Major Makeover

TECH CRUNCH - Dec 3 - Friendster is in for a major revamp tomorrow, including a new logo, tagline (”Connecting Smiles”) and an entirely fresh look. Friendster outlines some of the changes in this video.

FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Friendster's Comeback Plan

ASIAMEDIA JOURNAL - Oct 28 - After losing ground to Facebook in many of its Southeast Asian markets, Friendster has embarked on a comeback plan, launching a payments platform to sell virtual items and games. Friendster’s payment platform will be extended to third parties such as advertisers, game publishers and apps developers, allowing Friendster to take a cut of purchases made with its own currency. Friendster remains the leading social network by total audience in the Philippines according to ComScore. While Facebook leads in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore meanwhile, Friendster is number two. FULL ARTICLE @ ASIAMEDIA JOURNAL

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Friendster Launches Virtual Currencies

PCMAG - Oct 20 - Friendster continues to roll out new features. The newest Friendster feature is the Facebook-like introduction of virtual goods, payable with "Chips" and "Coins." Coins can be purchased through PayPal. Chips are earned through advertising offers, according to Inside Social Games. FULL ARTICLE @ PCMAG

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Friendster Bets Its Future On Southeast Asia

SF CHRONICLE - Oct 2 - Friendster is betting its future on Southeast Asia, with 90% of its traffic coming from the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. Friendster counts 115M members worldwide, that's still a far cry from the 300M registered members of Facebook. For Friendster, "the game is pretty much over here in the US," said Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff. Friendster says its biggest stronghold is in the Philippines, with ~12M active users per month. Still, comScore reports Friendster traffic in Southeast Asia dropped from 32.6M unique monthly visitors in Aug '08 to 13.7M this Aug, while Facebook zoomed from 24.8M to 71.1M. Friendster had slipped even below MySpace, with 15.1 million, while Twitter surged from 600,000 to 10.3 million. FULL ARTICLE @ SF CHRONICLE

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This post also appears at the SNC Forums.

Friendster Partners With Intelius

TECH CRUNCH - Sep 30 - Friendster is announcing a partnership with Washington based people search company Intelius. The goal, they say, is “to provide a more robust and comprehensive user search experience on Friendster and to power people searches originating on Friendster with results from across the web.” What Friendster isn’t saying is how they’ll monetize this search, and whether Intelius’ scammy privacy services will be offered to Friendster users. Earlier this year Intelius has been accused of tricking users into long term credit card subscriptions via a third party for worthless privacy protection products. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Do It Yourself Ads, Frienster’s Next Big Strategy?

SOCIAL TIMES -- July 29 -- Friendster is launching a new DIY advertising option for local businesses that would like to market on its site. The new DIY program is being offered through the support of ZEDO, an ad serving company for web publishers. To start, Friendster DIY Ads will be available globally in 75+ countries, though targeted ads are only supported in the US, Canada, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. FULL ARTICLE @ SOCIAL TIMES

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Friendster Shopping Itself Around In Asia

TECH CRUNCH -- July 27 -- Friendster is actively looking for a buyer and has hired investment bank Morgan Stanley to find a party interested in acquiring the company or at least some of its assets. The fact sheet that we obtained shows that Friendster/Morgan Stanley are gunning for a buyer who wants to gain quick access to the Asian social networking scene. One thing we couldn’t gather from the documents is the price Friendster is hoping to get. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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This post also appears at the SNC Forums

Founder Of Social Networking

LA TIMES -- July 23 -- Within a year after its launch in March 2003, Friendster had defined social networking as we know it today. The concept inspired hundreds of websites, including MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. Jonathan Abrams, founder of Friendster, takes pride in his claim to inventing the idea of requesting and accepting friendships online. But because he's been around it longer than anyone, he's also getting sick of all the friend requests. What he's promoting is his new start-up, Socializr. A sort of social calendar, the website is a direct competitor of Evite. FULL ARTICLE @ LA TIMES

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