While the idea of social networking sites wasn’t exactly new (similar sites such as MySpace and Livejournal were already quite popular), the idea of catching up with long-lost friends, old classmates and
distant relatives became an instant hit, causing millions of users to join Friendster to add up friends and acquaintances on the site.
“Add me on Friendster” became a popular catchphrase, and soon enough, nearly everyone had a Friendster account. Five years after it was launched, Friendster became the No. 3 social network site in the world, with over 58 million registered users.
Although other sites such as Facebook and Multiply have since joined the bandwagon and taken a hefty share of the market, there’s no denying that Friendster is still a force to contend with, despite its purportedly more “pang-masa” image.
According to David Jones, vice president for global marketing, Friendster was initially launched as a social experiment. “But now, we’re bigger than other sites such as Wikipedia, Amazon, ESPN and Craigslist,” he said.
“Friendster is very popular in Asia, especially here. Our biggest percentage of users is from the Philippines, clocking in with 39 percent of the site’s traffic.”
Big things
Because of the site’s popularity in Asia, the developers have decided to create more innovations targeted to the Asian market.
“We’re coming up with lots of big things,” said Jeff Roberto, marketing and public relations director of Friendster. “For one thing, we’re now offering the site in several languages. We used to be a purely English site, but it’s now available in simplified and traditional Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Spanish. That makes for roughly 66 percent of the languages used on the Internet.”
Roberto added, “Another innovation is the developer’s program, which allows other people to build features for Friendster through application program interfaces (API). But we still make sure that those programs don’t spread viruses to all our users.”
However, what has excited many in the Friendster community is introduction of the fan profiles.
Jones said, “This feature allows entities such as bands, singers, models, writers, photographers, athletes, TV shows, politicians and the like to be able to communicate with the community without having to overlap with people they really know.”
“Fan profiles allow them to separate friends from fans,” Jones said, citing examples such as Asian pop star Karen Kong, who exclusively offered her first Chinese-language album to her fans around the world through streaming format on Friendster.
Other innovations Friendster users can expect in the coming year include more Asian languages, more APIs for developers, enhancements for fan profiles and mobile-accessible Friendster.
Keeping in touch
Local show biz personalities have expressed their support for Friendster, saying that the site helped them keep in touch with their fans.
Actress Bianca King said, “I actually don’t have a Friendster profile yet, but I’m excited to get started so I can get in touch with my fans and answer their mail. It’s a good way to let them know whatever I have coming up, like a movie or show.”
Bossa nova singer Sitti Navarro and Hale frontman Champ Lui-Pio agreed, saying the site has helped them promote their upcoming shows and albums to their listeners.
“I get to know a lot of the fans and become friends with them through my site,” said sexy actress Katrina Halili. “There are quite a lot of fake accounts that carry my name on the site, but I’m flattered more often than not because they really get carried away and take pains to update their site and act like they’re me. But the fan profiles really help.”
“Friendster is really all about helping people keep in touch,” said Roberto. “Fan profiles and new languages are just a small part of it. Stick with us, and you’ll see what we have coming up.”
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