Hey, remember Friendster? The social networking site that started it all in 2003 has been bought for lock stock and all 100 million registered users. The buyer — MOL Global Pte. Ltd. a leading online payment solutions provider from Malaysia had recently acquired 100% of Friendster.

The net effect is the transformation of Friendster’s general look into … well, Facebook. You can’t really reinvent the wheel when it comes to social networking – your community will come and go, like it’s the next fashion statement. Facebook managed to reinvent themselves from the college networking site into the highly successful web product that it is today.

To be fair, Friendster’s ultimate goal is to bring in commercial content into the Asian market. As most of its registered users belong to the youth and over 90% of its traffic comes from Asia, it does make sense to leverage Friendster’s reach as a channel for distribution. It’s still alive, in some way. The trick is to utilize the 500,000 virtual and physical payment terminals of MOL to provide “real world benefits” to using Friendster.

As an example of what we’re talking about, that’s a Krispy Kreme Friendster themed donut being sold in stalls in the Philippines bearing the new “hip” white and green logo.

[Friendster]

AI Calculated Related Posts

1. The Social Network Pokes Fun At Mark Zuckerberg
2. Is social networking less safe, or are users more stupid?
3. Facebook: Relationship Buster
4. Death and the web: inevitable tech decisions
5. If social media websites were books: cool art

Hope you like that post!

Forever Geek is a resource for all things geek. You can stay tuned by having the latest FG news delivered to you for free via RSS.