Wednesday, 21 May 2008

Friendster Launches Mobile Site

Social networking site Friendster has launched a new mobile offering that aims to give its users an “anywhere, anytime” connection and allow them to keep in touch with friends even when away from the computer.

m.friendster.com is today accessible from any web-enabled mobile device. Friendster users can do the same activities as they would on their PC such as retrieve updates on their friends’ activities, check messages, review friend requests, post “shoutouts”, browse photos, browse user profiles and Fan Profiles, search for users by name or email, view birthdays, read horoscopes and post bulletins.

Hailed as a pioneer in the networking and virtual community, Friendster was one of the first sites to emerge when Web 2.0 first burst into the scene.

Since then its popularity as been eclipsed by new social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook because they offered more innovative applications that kept their users constantly entertained.

However Friendster, who has some 70 million users globally, has still managed to secure a strong foothold in the Asian market, reigning as the No. 1 social network in the region.

According to Friendster, in Asia, there are currently over 1.2 billion mobile phone users and over 315 million PC-based Internet users. Thus, the introduction of Friendster Mobile in Asia will allow hundreds of millions of people who have Internet-ready mobile devices, but may not have their own PC or access to a PC on a regular basis.

“Our users have asked for a mobile site that makes staying in touch with friends while on the go even easier. We’ve taken our most popular core social networking features and made them easy to use via mobile devices at m.friendster.com,” said David Jones, vice president of global marketing for Friendster.

Jones also said that plans are already underway to make the site available in multiple languages starting with Indonesian, given the social networks large and highly mobile user base in that country.