Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Technology: Friendster launches new mobile site-1st in a series of offerings

Now 70 million Friendster users worldwide can stay in touch anytime, anywhere

San Francisco and Manila, Philippines (ANTARA News/PRNewswire-AsiaNet) - Friendster, Inc. (http://www.friendster.com), the 8th largest website in the world and the #1 social network in Asia, today announced that its 70 million users and the over 1 billion Internet-ready mobile phone users globally can now stay in touch anywhere via Friendster's new mobile site, accessible at m.friendster.com from any web-enabled mobile device. The new mobile site is the first in a suite of forthcoming mobile offerings referred to as Friendster Mobile.

Using m.friendster.com from any Internet-ready mobile device, Friendster users can 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, post bulletins and much more. This enables more effective communications with friends while away from a computer.

m.friendster.com is free for all users. Users are still subject to their particular carrier data plan or wireless Internet service provider plan.

In the coming weeks, the site will be available in multiple languages.

Indonesian will be the first additional language, given Friendster's large and highly mobile user base in Indonesia where Friendster has over 8 million registered users and 4 million monthly unique visitors to Friendster.com, as of March 2008. Shortly, users will be able to also register directly on m.friendster.com, create an account and instantly begin participating in the Friendster global community.

In Asia, where Friendster is the #1 social network, there are currently over 1.2 billion mobile phone users and over 315 million PC-based Internet users. 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, to use Friendster.

"As the 8th largest website in the world, Friendster is pleased to offer our 70 million users around the globe the opportunity to access Friendster from their mobile phones," said David Jones, vice president of global marketing for Friendster. "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," he said.

Users should bookmark m.friendster.com on their mobile browser of choice to make it even easier to access their Friendster networks while on the go and tell their friends about how easy it is to stay in touch via Friendster Mobile.

Friendster Leads in Asia

Friendster is the #1 social network in Asia, with over 50 million registered users and 34 million monthly unique visitors from Asia.*

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.*

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 2008 and 9 million monthly unique visitors in the last 3 months.*

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.

*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/20080520AQTU070
PRN Photo Desk, photodesk@prnewswire.com
Web site: http://www.friendster.com
Image Attachments Links: http://asianetnews.netViewImage.asp?ID=97232

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