Virtual playground for fun and work
Social networking sites have turned into a virtual playground for the technology-savvy generation. Teens and adults alike find these online sites an efficient way to get connected.
WONDERING why your mates aren’t hanging around the mamak stall as often as before? Well, most likely they are all spending more time on Friendster, Asia’s top social networking site.
Do you know that of the total 14.9 million Internet population in Malaysia, over 4.2 million have registered on Friendster? Ask your friends who have already registered and they will likely agree that they go on Friendster to keep in touch with friends and get acquainted with new ones because it is simply easier and “cleaner”.
Malaysians also get on the Friendster bandwagon to meet activity partners. Be it scuba diving or classical music, you’re bound to find someone on Friendster who shares your interests because Malaysians generate as high as 2,748,000 monthly unique visitors on this network. There’s a chance that you might even meet that special someone.
If you have not jumped onto this bandwagon just yet, there are more reasons to do so now. Friendster has added more features, one of the most important being more language choices. If previously only English was used, now on the same domain users can communicate in simplified or traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Spanish.
David Jones, vice president, marketing at Friendster, says, “Friendster has a large number of bi-lingual users who would like the choice to enter their content and use the site in major non-English languages. Additionally, countless users are looking forward to inviting their friends and family who speak these languages to join them on Friendster.”
Schools is another cool feature that Friendster recently introduced. This feature enables users to add a school or college and quickly trace old friends, Jones explains.
Now, don’t be surprised if the nerd in your class has turned into a superstar – through another unique feature aboard Friendster called Fan Profile where celebrities and personalities can build a fan base.
Jones describes Fan Profile as a great way to have a relationship with people, and separating fans from friends gives the relationship more visibility. Fan Profile also has a deeper set of promotional tools such as Bulk Invitation, which allows a personality to jumpstart the network, and Auto Accept, where fan requests can be added without having to be logged on all the time.
A local personality who had launched her career online is singer Karen Kong, who has garnered a global fan base through her Friendster Fan Profile page, www.friendster.com/karenkong/. She has also put up video and audio on the site specially for her fans.
Putting up materials such as video and audio on Friendster has been made easy due to Friendster’s commitment to support the new OpenSocial APIs launched by Google. OpenSocial allows even more developers to work with Friendster and build a bridge between multiple social media sites, enabling the portability of social applications.
Friendster is currently hosting over 200 widgets contributed by developers ranging from students to major television networks. For Friendster users, this can only mean good news. As Jones puts it, “Think of it as 200 new features that you and your friends can experience.”
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