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Friendster Going Strong In Asia, Maybe Soon In Court
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!"
You'll be hard pressed to make me shed a tear if Facebook and MySpace are sued out of existance
Friendster is the perfect place to grab a hot asian girlfriend? I see a social networking un-collapse in their future.
I could never quite figure out what you were supposed to do on Friendster, other than leave testimonials. At least on Facebook you can play games against your friends and communicate in a few different ways. Maybe Friendster has expanded, but it just seemed like a contact list to me.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
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.
Facebook has got me closer to getting a date then anything else on the internet!
Oh wait, did I just hit submit?
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Yes, thanks, I've called it the auto-patent-maximizer(c).
Presumably the success of Orkut in those countries is due to the simple fact that Orkut isn't as a stupidly lame-sounding name as it is in English.
Or are Google's Marketing droids still in beta?
"social networking" of which you speak? Is that like when I post stupid comments on slashdot?
Orkut, going strong. yes. Making money? no way.
If I as a publisher am not making money runing Adsense. Noway is google making money on orkut.
General purpose social networks, the way they are structured currently will *never* make money over an extended period of time.
Sure there is hype now, ever joker of marketing manager wants to do something on *social media*, widgets and dump traditional marketing. Ironic. Coz three years ago when I was trying to sell them internet, they'd laugh in my face. But, wait till long term impact of shortsighted advertising decisions starts to get measured. they'll drop all this and go back to nuts and bolts marketing. And then... we will talk.
People don't like us...Sue until they have too!
Ave Molech Setting
Not that unusual. For example, Neoxepia [sp?] is very popular in Canada, while hi5 is popular in Latin American countries.
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
All your friend are belong to us...
I can't be sure because the article is not that quite straightforward, but I don't think they counted India as part of Asia.
:)
Besides, they're not claiming to have the most traffic in Asia, they're claiming to have the third largest traffic figures in Asia -- whatever that is supposed to mean. But to be fair, this article offers very little of substance in terms of statistics -- it reads more like a badly written press release. Only a press release would brag about deploying text messaging nowadays.
That racism is why you're ronery...so very rooonery... [/space-cockroach]
Both nieces in Philippines using it for years. It was always huge there. And, it's still growing. Lots of Thai people, too.
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.
I'm a Malaysian, and I study in Singapore. I have both Friendster and Facebook account. Last year most of my friends were still in Friendster only, and so did I. This year, most of my friends have accounts on both side.
I would still prefer Friendster than Facebook. The interface in Friendster is so much simpler. When you see one's profile page, it is a page full of description from him/herself. I can see directly what does this person look like, have quick access to his/her photos and list of his/her friends. Much of the space below the profile page is occupied by self description written by that person, and that is the key thing for him/her to reflect what he/she wants other to know about themselves.
Finally, there are testimonials which are similar to the wall in Facebook. Some people's testimonials are full of fancy pictures such as "friends forever", but I'm glad that the pollution in Friendster is not so much compared to Facebook, part of the reason being there is no automatic mechanism to send testimonial to everyone in your friend list. There are some extra things that you may find in a profile page, such as applications add-on, css decoration and media box. But to me they are just clone of Facebook and none of them interest me.
Compare Friendster's profile page to Facebook, what do I see in Facebook? One small picture on the left, few details of personal information, followed by a mini-feed which tells about useless updates. Then a bunch of junks about who is the hottest, games, pets thingy and whatever more you can think of. The wall in Facebook is pretty much hidden, replaced by SuperWalls where all inside are rubbish forwards which spread like virus in one click. In the end what do I know more about this person? Effectively none.
I like the KISS design of the old profile page in Friendster. It has so much less rubbish than in Facebook. A profile page should be a page to let people know more about you, not to let random people play games with each other. I don't care how you guys in US think about Friendster, because I believe that one day Friendster will stand strong and get pass Facebook. Facebook is just a hype and one day it will burst with other social bubbles just as what happened in dot-com boom.
oh! an ad hominem attack. that's original. I suppose on slashdot you can't expect any better. I suppose u think Slashdot a site to show your language prowess eh.
Well anyway, i was referring to the 130 million page impressions a month that my company is giving to Adsense...
Now go and curl up in a corner... Joker
Ah, copyrighted too! I imagine you used the patented process to procure that as well ;)
Read my Very Short "Stories"
umm.. I believe friendster in Indonesia make lots of money, especially from cellphone providers ad, which naturally benefit from any kind of social network to gather more subscribers, because intra-provider call is very cheap. One provider actually only charge 0.01 cents per each call. You read that right. It's in decimals, it's in cent, and it's per call initiated.
If you delay pleasure infinitely, the pleasure will be infinite. (YM)
Well so is Yahoo! My Asian wife and all her friends and relatives only use Yahoo! messenger and Yahoo! mail. And Friendster of course.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
And in Finland 'orkku' is a slang word for orgasm, plural of which is 'orkut'. And amazingly we are a Facebook-nation anyway.
I have no facts about Brazil or India, but the above about Finnish is an actual fact.
Patent pending.
- Dan
I'm from Brazil, and no, orkut doesn't mean or sound like our equivalent for "hot sex". It sounds like nothing actually. If anything, the feel is that of a typical meaningless foreign brand name.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.