Ask anyone on whether they have an account on Friendster and most probably they will say yes.Nowadays,there are so many social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook but for most people in Asia,they prefer Friendster.So why is it so popular among Asians then?
Let's do some history checking about how it came about first.The Friendster site was actually founded in Mountain View,California,by Jonathan Abrams in March 2002 and is privately owned while MySpace was first started somewhere in August 2003 and Facebook was launched on February 2004.You may wonder why is it then Friendster is not as popular and not as big in terms of the number of users as compared to the other two since Friendster was the one which started the idea first.According to my research,Friendster currently has over 50 million users as compared to Facebook's 69 million users and MySpace have more than a 100 million users.The downturn for Friendster actually started when they suffered software glitches and slow access times which prompted users to flee to the now hugely popular MySpace and Facebook.Then in 2003,Google offered $30 million to buy Friendster but it was turned down but Friendster did bounce back.
Thanks largely to an accident of geography,it's become Southeast Asia's top social networking site.Asia is home to three-quarters of Friendster's 58 million users,compared to 17% in the U.S. ,and it's the source of 89% of the site's traffic,compared to just 8% from North America.In fact,Friendster is already the most-visited web site in the Philippines and Indonesia,and the second most-visited site in Malaysia and Singapore,according to rankings from web tracker Alexa.And due to the success,Friendster hired a 20-person engineering team in the Philippines in 2006 and and last September,it opened a sales office here in Singapore.The reason for the success is because when the company moved from California to San Francisco,there was a lot of Asian-American Californians who then help to who formed a nucleus that quickly expanded across the Pacific as users invited friends and relatives in Asia to join the network.And it was because of this success that Friendster is now available in many Asian languages such as Chinese,Korean,and more recently Bahasa Indonesia to cater to the huge number of Asian users in the various country.
Friendster now has a big plan ahead.It is reaching out to the 210 million Internet users in China,where the company's user base is already "in the hundreds of thousands," according to its President.Friendster may have a tough time staying ahead of its wealthier American rivals,which are starting to look to Asia for growth,as well as formidable local competitors such as Shanghai-based 51.com,which already has 90 million subscribers.Less than 10% of visitors to MySpace and Facebook live in Asia,according to June 2007 figures from Internet research company comScore,but that is set to change.MySpace now operates separate sites in Japan and China,and has plans to launch sites in several more countries this year,including South Korea and India while Facebook is starting to show a rise in the number of Asian visitors in last 2 years or so.
It was an interesting article to read.For me,I dont have any idea which is the best social networking site to join because I only have a Friendster account.I cant remember how I was introduce to it,I guess I just follow the trend then.When I saw my friends having a Friendster account,I wanted to do the same as well.I used to have a MySpace account too but I didnt use it for quite a long time already and I have forgotten the password and username because unlike Friendster,it was difficult for me to find my friends who also have a MySpace account there.For me actually,I think all social networking sites are the same,only different names and different services but the main thing for somebody to set up an account there is to keep in touch with your friends and maybe make new friends as well.Friendster started it and it was a brilliant idea.I do think that in the future,Friendster will be the most popular networking site as compared to the others because they have already set up a strong base in Asia and their next target will probably be in Europe and America whereas their competitors now is just trying to move into the Asian market which is not an easy thing to do,adding to the fact that Friendster has already huge popularity and sucsess here.
Whatever it is,I dont think I am going to stop being a user on Friendster and jump to MySpace of Facebook because I am very content with what they offering to the users right now.I also dont think that I will a new account on social networking sites because it would be confusing for me to look after two different accounts on two different websites.What about you? Do you have a MySpace/Facebook account? Is is very different from Friendster or is it relatively the same? Share with me.
*This report was taken from CNN and the informations was taken from Wikipedia.
No comments:
Post a Comment