Friendster now officially rebrand the social networking site as an online gaming platform, walking away from the stiff competition of social networking sites. They didn’t stand a chance, really.
The pre-historic social network Friendster has been totally forgotten for the past years, casted by the shadow of Facebook, Twitter and other social networks existed. After they experienced some serious trouble since 2006, Friendster still attempted several effort to survive but none of those strategies could make Friendster cool again.
Today, they plan to change that. After that -luckily- Friendster was sold to Malaysia-based MOL Global (Money Online), which is an online payment platform and commerce network. And some executives at MOL Global already gave a slight clue on where they’re taking Friendster, and it’s going to be about gaming. Friendster was already starting to enable user to use apps from third party developers, most of them were online games and apparently it’s the first stage of transforming Friendster from a social networking platform into a full-circle gaming platform integrated with MOL’s payment platform.
One of Friendster’s advantage is that they’re owned by MOL, the biggest online payment company in SouthEast Asia – Friendster’s biggest user base. Other gaming platform doesn’t have that, even Facebook is partnering with MOL for taking money from its South East Asian apps users. This can be a huge benefit for Friendster.
Although the look of the site is still very ugly, I can still see a bright future of Friendster in gaming especially related to South East Asian market where people love online games. This fact about the vast gaming market in SEA is true, and even most US-based gaming companies will have to admit it.
One question that you would probably ask : Where did the photos, blogs, comments, testimonials and all the other content in my old Friendster profile go? Sorry guys, but they already remove it. But hey, hopefully the new kids who didn’t know Friendster before would love it. Right? RIGHT???
>>hopefully the new kids who didn’t know Friendster before would love it. Right? RIGHT???
True… painfully true…
Friendster relaunching as an online gaming platform is a better move. However, the brand recall for its name is still as a social networking site. They should’ve changed it’s name too.
Hoping the other guys will accept the friendster as a gaming platform.
nice improvement but it’s too late….at least for me. i already forgot my friendster login and pass. + beside games, there is lot more features in Facebook are better than Friendster. sorry 🙁
In my opinion this was a very clever move. There are already too many big players in the social-networking industry.
i wonder if the games are any good.
Boomz3.0 is a pretty cool game!