Friendster Announces Mobile Text Alerts
Over 70 Million Friendster Users Can Soon Subscribe to Friendster Text Alerts
on Their Mobile Phones
SAN FRANCISCO and SINGAPORE, June 26, 2008 - Friendster, Inc. (www.friendster.com), the 7th largest website in the world and the #1 social network in Asia, today announced at ad:tech Singapore that its users in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines will soon be able to subscribe to Friendster Text Alerts, a full suite of alerts covering activity in their Friendster network, sent directly to their mobile devices via SMS text messages. Friendster Text Alerts is Friendster’s second mobile offering and complements Friendster’s successful mobile site, m.friendster.com, launched in May 2008.
When launched, Friendster users can subscribe to receive text message alerts for friend requests, new messages, comments, bulletins and more. When such activity takes place within their network of friends on Friendster, they will receive an SMS text message on their mobile phone. Users will also be able to share and communicate on Friendster by sending a text message to Friendster to update content on their profile, such as shoutouts and bulletins, send messages, and reply to friend requests. Friendster Text Alerts will increase timely communication among users and support and encourage network activity while Friendster users are away from a computer.
“Since SMS text messaging technology is universally available on over 1.2 billion mobile phones in use today in Asia, all of our 52 million users in Asia that have mobile phones can subscribe to Friendster Text Alerts and stay connected when they are on the go and away from a computer,” said David Jones, vice president of global marketing for Friendster.
Friendster Text Alerts will be launched in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines in the coming weeks. Friendster will announce this feature to its users when it becomes available in each country. Friendster Text Alerts is an enhanced offering based upon a pilot program previously introduced in the Philippines.
“Recent studies have shown that about 90% of Asia’s mobile phone subscribers use SMS text messaging, and some of the highest per subscriber usage of text messaging is in countries in Southeast Asia. It’s only natural to combine the most popular mobile feature – text messaging – with the most popular social network in Asia,” said Jones.
Friendster users must opt-in, or register, to use Friendster Text Alerts by entering their mobile phone details and selecting which mobile text alerts they wish to receive. Friendster does not charge its users for Friendster Text Alerts, but users are subject to text messaging usage fees of their wireless service provider.
Friendster Leads in Asia
Friendster is the #1 social network in Asia, with over 52 million registered users and 36 million monthly unique visitors from Asia.1 In Asia, Friendster is more than twice the size of any other social network. While Friendster has 36 million monthly unique visitors in Asia, Facebook has 18 million, MySpace.com and MySpace.cn have 16 million combined, Mixi (Japan) has 14 million, CyWorld (Korea) has 13 million, Hi5 has 12 million, Orkut has 12 million, Xiaonei (China) has 7 million, 51.com (China) has 6 million, and Bebo has 4 million.1
Friendster – A Top 10 Website Globally
Friendster is the 7th largest website in the world of any kind and the 3rd largest social network in terms of traffic, with over 22.4 billion page views a month.1 Friendster is 1st in “user engagement” among the top 5 global social networks, with visitors to Friendster.com averaging 229 minutes per month. And user engagement on Friendster is more than double those of other top global non-social networking websites, such as YouTube (93 minutes), eBay (78 minutes), Google (48 minutes) and Amazon (14 minutes). Friendster continued its rapid growth to 40 million monthly unique visitors in April, adding 18 million monthly unique visitors in the last year, or 78 percent annual growth.*
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 via www.friendster.com or m.friendster.com from any Internet ready mobile device. 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: www.friendster.com.
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Media Contact:
Lerin O'Neill
The Hoffman Agency for Friendster
+1.408.975.3037
press@friendster.com
*comScore Media Metrix, April 2008