Friendster, Inc. (http://www.friendster.com) today announced that Friendster.com is available in Vietnamese, allowing Friendster users and visitors a greater choice of languages with which to navigate the site, enter content and use Friendster’s complete set of social networking features.

The 18 million Internet users in Vietnam and Vietnamese around the world can now easily join and use Friendster, the pioneer of social networking that is now the 8th largest website globally of any kind based on traffic.(1)

Friendster currently fully supports eight languages - English, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Spanish.

These languages represent over 67 per cent of the world’s Internet users, or over three quarters of a billion Internet users in total.

“Since Friendster is the #1 social network in all of Asia and has more than twice the users of any other social network in Asia, the Friendster social networking experience clearly resonates with its 50 million users across Asia,” said David Jones, vice president of global marketing for Friendster.

“Now that Friendster.com is available in Vietnamese, the entire country of Vietnam can now visit and use Friendster, see who’s on Friendster, invite their friends, and start using Friendster to express themselves and share and communicate with friends and family globally.”

In Asia, members use Friendster to find lost friends, keep in touch with friends and family, make new friends, share photos and photo albums, send messages, express themselves through their personalized profile page, write a personal blog, start or participate in a group on a specific topic, become a fan of their favorite artist or celebrity (”Fan Profiles”), post “shoutouts” and bulletins, and use many new features created by third parties via the Friendster Developer Program.

Friendster has implemented multi-language support on a single domain - Friendster.com - to promote communication and interaction among users who speak different languages.

About 79 per cent of active friendster users have friends in more than one country, and 23 per cent of friend connections are between users in different countries.

These cross-border percentages, believed to be the highest of all major social networks, require multi-language support to be implemented in a single, global Web site.

While other social networking sites create separate sites for different countries or languages, Friendster was the first global online social network to employ this single-site approach to allow and encourage multi-cultural exchange and communications - regardless of language - among users around the world.

“Friendster has a large number of bilingual users who would like the choice to enter their content and use the site in either English or Vietnamese, and countless users are looking forward to inviting their friends and family who speak Vietnamese to join them on Friendster,” said Jones.

Users can permanently or temporarily set their language of choice via links at the top right of every page of the Friendster.com Web site or via the “Settings” link.

Friendster Leads in Asia

Friendster is the No. 1 social network in Asia, with over 50 million registered users and 34 million monthly unique visitors from Asia.(1) In Asia, Friendster is more than twice the size of any other social network. While Friendster has over 34 million monthly unique visitors in Asia, Facebook has 16 million, MySpace.com and MySpace.cn have only 15 million combined, Mixi (Japan) has 14 million, CyWorld (Korea) has 13 million, Hi5 has 12 million, Orkut has 10 million, Xiaonei (China) has 7 million, 51.com (China) has 7 million, and Bebo has 4 million.(1)

Friendster - A Top 10 Website Globally

Friendster is the 8th-largest Web site and the 3rd largest social network in the world in terms of traffic, and #1 in user engagement - time spent on site - among top social networks.

Friendster now has 68 million registered users and 39 million monthly unique visitors. Friendster continued its healthy growth by adding another 2 million monthly unique visitors in March and 9 million monthly unique visitors in the last 3 months.(1)

About Friendster

With more than 70 million members worldwide, Friendster is a leading global online social network. Friendster is focused on helping people stay in touch with friends and discover new people and things that are important to them.

Online adults, 18 and up, choose Friendster to connect with friends, family, school, social groups, activities and interests.

Friendster prides itself in delivering an easy-to-use, friendly and interactive environment where users can easily connect with anyone around the world.

Friendster has a growing portfolio of patents granted to the company on social networking, with more expected over the next several months.

Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Friendster is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures and individual investors. For more information, visit: http://www.friendster.com.

(1) comScore Media Metrix, March 2008

SOURCE: Friendster, Inc.
CONTACT: Lerin O’Neill of The Hoffman Agency,
+1-408-975-3037, press@friendster.com, for Friendster
Photo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh 20080515/AQTH053
PRN Photo Desk, photodesk@prnewswire.com
Web site: http://www.friendster.com

AOL said Monday that it has closed the $850 million purchase of Bebo and has put Bebo CEO Joanna Shields in charge of the newly acquired social network, AIM and ICQ.

Shields will be in charge of a new AOL unit dubbed “People Networks.” The general theme (Techmeme): Integrate social networking throughout the AOL network and its 80 million users. Shields, who landed at the AOL via the Bebo purchase, will report to AOL president and operating chief Ron Grant.

As part of the move, AOL said it will focus on three areas: The advertising network, publishing and people networks. The goal: Figure out a way to monetizing social networking, a challenge that has befuddled monetization kings like Google.

Among the items on AOL’s social networking to-do list

• Integrate AOL IM, chat and email into Bebo. Users will have common screen names.
• Integrate other AOL acquisitions–Goowy Media and Yedda for instance–into the People Networks unit. AOL will also cross-distribute content on these properties. In short, you’ll see Bebo’s original programming across multiple properties.
• Monetize this social fiesta with open media platforms and content screening.

Internet company Yahoo said on Sunday that it was considering a “number of value maximising strategic alternatives” and would evaluate any proposal made by Microsoft Corp..Yahoo recently rebuffed a $33 a share takeover offer from Microsoft. Microsoft said earlier on Sunday it has proposed an alternative deal to Yahoo rather than a full acquisition.

In a statement, Yahoo said it had confirmed with Microsoft that it was not interested in pursuing an acquisition of all of the company, but it was considering alternatives and remained open to pursuing any deal in the best interest of stockholders.

The board “will evaluate each of our alternatives, including any Microsoft proposal, consistent with its fiduciary duties, with a focus on maximizing stockholder value,” it said.

At first, Facebook was on board with the experiment. Google (GOOG) was testing a new tool that would let Web sites add a host of new social networking features. Using Google Friend Connect, for example, fans of indie pop musician Ingrid Michaelson could invite their friends, via their Facebook accounts, to join her Web site. Google’s tool would let them import their Facebook contacts and then send out the invites to their friends’ Facebook feeds. But just days after the trial began on May 12, Facebook “suspended” access for Google Friend Connect, saying it violated privacy terms in its user agreement.

Though Facebook says it has “reached out to Google several times about this issue” to work out a solution, the abrupt about-face underscores some of the growing tensions—and blurring lines—between social networks and traditional Web portals, both of which are angling to capitalize on the presumed advertising riches that will come from social media.

“MySpace has launched an advertising platform which will allow advertisers to build, maintain and customize brand profiles.”

New York — After a few months opening its platform to outside application developers, MySpace on Monday said it started testing a technology that provides advertisers a window through which they can evaluate their ad campaigns and make changes on the fly without waiting for help from MySpace’s staff.

“MySpace already permitted marketers to promote their brands via profiles; though it has handled the creation and updating of these profiles.”

This is a gigantic change from the strongly controlled, often painstaking process brands previously had to endure to have a presence on the social network. It is also a response, MySpace said, to advertisers’ wish to use the community more as a standing customer-relationship tool rather than a three-months-and-split campaign tool.

The shift “is an essential move in the way we view this business,” said Bryce Emo, senior VP-head of sales at MySpace. “We want advertisers and clients to have control so they can have a more active relationship with clients.”

According to Emo, the new platform “enables marketers to fulfill long-term communication strategies with consumers who engage in and friend their communities. It is an opportunity to connect with users faster and easier than ever before.”

The technology, called “Community Builder,” MySpace’s recently announced advertising platform, is currently in private beta.

“Community Builder” allow marketers to analyze the impact of their online ad effort and respond to ad campaigns by updating multi-media content or things like updating blogs, studying finely tuned traffic data, changing videos, shifting ads, or testing messages.

MySpace, in addition provides analytical tools, something which will finally help marketers justify their social marketing activity.

Emo added, “Community Builder is the next evolution of the MySpace brand profile -– a more flexible solution that puts creative freedom and control into the hands of advertisers to ensure that a community stays dynamic and interesting in between major campaigns and projects.”

Social networks attracted $920 million in ad expenditure in the United States in 2007, according to eMarketer, and that is expected to grow to $1.6 billion in 2008. The research firm expects worldwide ad spending on social networks to increase 75 percent from $1.2 billion in 2007 to $2.1 billion in 2008.

Community Builder is available in two versions. The self service version is targeted at marketers who are able to handle relatively advanced web coding. The full service version is targeted at marketers less well versed in web coding.

Both versions offer advertisers 24/7 access to update community elements (blogs, bulletins) as well as increased analytics (via Hitbox) and profile functionality.