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Facebook and MySpace most definitely have snubbed past and dwarfed almost every social network in the web-sphere. Friendster is just another one of those unlucky ones for it pioneered the social networking scene. Friendster still has quite a lot of following in Asia and the current news reveals that it has plans to vest its resources there.
Friendster has put forward plans a $20 million investment round along with re-enforcing its team with the inclusion of a new chief executive; Richard Kimber, Managing Director of South Asia for Google as the New York Time reports. The funding is to be led by ID Ventures including former investors namely, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Benchmark Capital.
The social network claims to have more than 75 million users (wonder how many have used it in the recent past) and it remains the top social network in Asia with around 33 million monthly unique visitors. The step must be to force its way back into the race by capitalizing on its success in Asia.
Well it remains to be seen as to what possible strategy they might devise to implement their plans; the hiring of Richard might be a hit to use his success at marketing Google in Asia to help Friendster expand further? But let’s just keep that aside and focus at what the plan turns out as Friendster makes a press release.
I think that it is only good to watch companies adopting to the changing conditions. Ok, Friendster lost the market in the US but it has immense success in Asia, very good decision with the rapidly growing Asian market to focus on this audience.
Exactly, I know many people from Malaysia, Singapore and other Asia Pacific countries where Friendster is the choice of networks at the moment. Just like Orkut has a big following in the south asian countries. The choice of networks really is different depending on the regions, except for Facebook which seems to have a global following.