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Friendster Going Strong In Asia, Maybe Soon In Court

Posted by kdawson on from the now-for-the-guns-and-money dept.

Dekortage writes "Remember Friendster? Long ago outrun and lapped by MySpace and Facebook, and a textbook case of social networking collapse, Friendster appears to be going strong in Asia, and has recently stolen Google's Asia chief for its new CEO. More ominously, though, a recent press release (PDF) notes that the company 'was the first social networking company to launch key features, including the social graph server, a network activities tracker, and more. Friendster has been granted three fundamental patents and has more patents pending.' Hello, lawyers!"

4 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Re:speaking of has-beens and never-will-bes... by Affenkopf · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nope, it hasn't. Orkut is the number one social networking site in Brazil and India, so Google is probably still making money with it.

  2. Regional social networks, not new by Haoie · · Score: 2, Informative

    Not that unusual. For example, Neoxepia [sp?] is very popular in Canada, while hi5 is popular in Latin American countries.

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    If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
  3. Re:What is it for? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Friendster was useful at one point as a means for meeting people with similar interests. Then they killed all the "fakester" accounts which basically killed most of the reason for having a Friendster account. But before that, it was a good way to connect with other people.

    And there wasn't anything to do on Friendster, but that was kinda the point. Go online, meet people and then do actual activities in person with those people you met. Some people actually prefer actual human interaction to the faux interaction offered by online communities.

    And that's what made the fakesters great...many of them implied a certain type of activity. If you were friends with the fakester for a certain bar in your neighborhood, you'd meet up with people you met through that fakester at that bar. If you were friends with the fakester for your favorite sports team, you'd meet up with people at the game. There were fakesters for just about any abstract concept you can think of. So the site was simply good for "hooking up" (in all senses of the phrase) with other people, nothing more. And that's actually preferable to some people.

  4. Doesn't need to be fancy by TheLink · · Score: 1, Informative

    I thought all these sites are mainly for people to:

    1) Show off their plumages, tails and strut/dance/whatever so that they can attract potential mates.
    2) pick lice off/play with their friends fur and so strengthen bonds. :)

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