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Tag: Friendster

  • The Internet Population Boom

    The Internet Population Boom

    Internet marketing agency Customer Magnetism just compiled a new infographic describing the rise of worldwide internet use over the past decade.

    internet population infographic

    There’s been 528.1% in growth of internet users since 2000, with 32.7% of world population now online, equalling 2.27 billion people. Google takes the search cake at 66.2%, with Bing and Yahoo coming in at 15.2% and 14.1% respectively.

    Forty-three percent of online consumers use social media while shopping, and 90% of the purchases they go on to make are influenced by platforms like Facebook. Likewise, at its most recent count, Facebook has roughly 901 million active users, and 93% of adults online in the U.S. have accounts. The infographic shows that roughly 1 in 11 internet users are on Facebook, with roughly 2 in 5 web users being active members of the platform.

    Facebook just announced its IPO, raising $16 billion at a $104 billion valuation. Founder Mark Zuckerburg once stated that deceased social network Friendster was a model for his site – investors don’t seem to be too weary of the notion that there really is nothing in place for The Social Network to devolve into the next Myspace.

  • Zuckerberg Admits Friendster Was a Model for Facebook

    Zuckerberg Admits Friendster Was a Model for Facebook

    Friendster, launched in 2002 and the most popular social network pre-Myspace (2003), was said to be a bit of a template for Facebook (2004), according to founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In an interview with the Harvard Crimson in 2004, Zuckerberg claimed that Friendster was a model for the social network he was developing, which made news at the time after ‘thefacebook.com’ registered hundreds of users overnight. The article in the Crimson is reminiscent of a piece Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network script, though the Winklevoss brothers or Eduardo Saverin aren’t mentioned.

    Zuckerberg mentions in the interview, “Everyone’s been talking a lot about a universal face book within Harvard – I think it’s kind of silly that it would take the University a couple of years to get around to it. I can do it better than they can, and I can do it in a week.” No wonder the Zuckerberg character was written as sort of a snot-nosed punk genius in Sorkin’s script. Especially since Zuckerberg had no way of knowing that his dorm room startup would come to change the internet, and making Friendster look like a mere hiccup.

    Zuckerberg adds, “I’m pretty happy with the amount of people that have been to it so far – The nature of the site is that each user’s experience improves if they can get their friends to join it.” Facebook presently has roughly 901 million users – it’s safe to say the user experience has improved since 2004.

    As for Friendster, the dead social network finally deleted user data at the end of May last year, and has now evolved into a social gaming platform, based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Interestingly, back in 2003, when the site was still relevant, Friendster declined an offer from Google for a $30 million buyout.

    Hat tip to Mashable.

  • Friendster Reinvents Itself With Social Gaming

    The long thought dead social media site “Friendster” is trying to reinvent it self as a social gaming platform. The old “IT” social media platform before Facebook, and before Myspace has decided that after it was no longer a player in the social media game, that it would use it’s fairly good name recognition to launch a gaming platform specifically designed for social gamers.

    MOL Groups CEO, Ganesh Kumar Bangah, elaborated on Friendster’s change in business practices. “By leveraging on Friendster’s strongest asset in the form of its millions of users and harnessing MOL’s strength as a e-payments and content distributer, we were able to successfully redesign Friendster to become a social discovery and gaming platform, host to the largest online community in Southeast Asia.”

    The new website which is listed as a “Beta” version features categories such as Role Playing, Shooting, Strategy, Puzzles, Card Games, Adventure, Arcade, and Simulation. Each category features several games and it seems as though Friendster has become a portal to these free to play flash games found in other places on the internet.

    They will be having a relaunch event in Manila, The Philippines at the SM North Cyberzone Activity Area. COO Nikolai Galicia had this to say about the relaunch: “It is a joy to roll out Friendster’s inaugural event here, to a community that is continuously growing. We are committed in continually bringing the latest content and giving the most compelling rewards to our users.”

    Pushing forward it will be interesting to see how Friendster deals with it’s new model, and if name recognition alone is enough to push this new platform.

  • Friendster Deleting User Data on May 31

    Friendster Deleting User Data on May 31

    Friendster is doing some spring cleaning at the end of May. The old school social networking site has announced to users that it will be deleting user information (such as photos, blogs, comments, messages, etc.) on May 31.

    Friendster is, however, letting users download their information before they obliterate it. They’ve made an app available that lets users export all of that precious Friendster data. On the site’s help center, it says:

    The Friendster Exporter is an app that helps you download or export your current Friendster information, including your profile information, your friends list, your photos, messages, comments, testimonials, shoutouts, blogs and groups. To install this app, click here or type the following URLhttp://apps.friendster.com/exporter on your browser, then follow the instructions.

    If you do not wish to keep all this history or information, then you do not need to do anything. Whether you use the Exporter or not, your Friendster account will not be deleted. Your list of friends will be preserved, along with your basic profile information. Your wallet and games details will also remain unchanged.

    It’s clear that Friendster’s chances of winning the social network market share game have been pretty slim for a long time now. The company (acquired in 2009, by MOL Global) seems to be officially conceding to this fact. MySpace did this recently when it got more integrated with Facebook too.

    If you go to Friendster now, it’s all about gaming.

    Last summer, Facebook paid a reported $40 million to acquire some Friendster patents, which could have helped the company prevent some lawsuits.

  • Facebook Acquires Friendster Patents

    Almost every time a company is dragged into court, the process becomes a drain on its resources and isn’t great for PR (no matter how ridiculous the claims).  It’s perhaps understandable, then, that Facebook has acquired all of Friendster’s social networking patents and patent applications for a reported $40 million.

    Although everything was kept hush-hush at the time, late yesterday, Owen Thomas was able to point to a United States Patent and Trademark Office page documenting the move.  It proves that seven patents and 11 patent applications changed hands in mid-May, when Facebook must have been negotiating its Facebook Credits deal with Friendster owner MOL Global.

    As for what the patents cover, the first handful of titles are "Multimedia aggregation in an online social network," "Proximity search methods using tiles to represent geographical zones," "Method for sharing relationship information stored in a social network database with third party databases," "Compatibility scoring of users in a social network," and "System and method for managing connections in an online social network."

    Then the last couple are "Method of inducing content uploads in a social network" and "System, method and apparatus for connecting users in an online computer system based on their relationships within social networks."

    Meanwhile, it was Liz Gannes who was able to pinpoint the purchase price at $40 million.

    This represents an interesting move on Facebook’s part.  Again, as a purely defensive measure, it makes a certain amount of sense.  But owning these patents could also help the company go after Google if it becomes too much of a threat in the social space, or Facebook might be putting itself on firmer legal ground in preparation for an IPO.

  • Yahoo Southeast Asia Seals Deal With Friendster

    Late yesterday, Yahoo Southeast Asia got what may be a big leg up in the social networking arena.  Yahoo Southeast Asia established a partnership with Friendster that will see the two entities doing a great deal of cross-promotion in the near future.

    Friendster has over 90 million registered users, and about 90 percent of its daily traffic comes from Southeast Asia, so the arrangement is a rather significant deal.  Yahoo stands to benefit as Friendster is putting ads for Yahoo services all over users’ homepages and profile pages.  Then Yahoo will receive some additional exposure when Friendster incorporates its search results.

    As for what Friendster gets out of the equation, a Friendster application has already been granted a spot on the Yahoo homepages in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore.  Plus, Friendster users are supposed to obtain the option to link a Friendster account to a Yahoo account.

    Both sides seem more than pleased about the arrangement.  Ken Mandel, the vice president and managing director of Yahoo Southeast Asia, said in a statement, "Working together with Friendster ensures Yahoo! remains relevant to people by offering the best online content and experiences."

    He then added, "This is a major milestone in the Yahoo! Open Strategy, our combined services will enrich the online environment allowing people to get more done faster and in a single place."

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