
Friendster Relaunches - nakajima
http://friendster.com
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iMark
"Join Friendster Today - Login with Facebook"

I'd like to have been in the room when that discussion took place.

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joejohnson
I'm at work and my company's network blocks Social Networking sites. Is this a
joke? Does it really allow you to login in Facebook?

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albedoa
Yes. It is the most prominent method of joining that they display on the
landing page. This is real.

Edit: Granted, they relaunched it as a social gaming site, so that signup
method makes a bit more sense.

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guillermovs
They probably get paid to implement Facebook connect on their million+
userbases though. So it may make more sense that way. Although to be fair
allowing access to 750m (fb) users is a sensible enough argument.

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localtalent
They were acquired in 2009 by MOL[1], an online points and payments system.
MOL already has gaming infrastructure and points mechanisms built out (as well
as a Friendster-branded internet cafe and licensable cafe management
software[2]) - this looks like a push to gain traction for game-related
payments in the US market, already popular in much of Asia. If they can start
to eat away at Zynga's share, it makes a world of sense.

[1] <http://global.mol.com/global/portal/en/Default.aspx>
[2]<http://www.molglobal.net/?page_id=1325>

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dfischer
Myspace is sold and friendster relaunches? We're not in a bubble, we're in a
circle!

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knieveltech
Look, kids! Big Ben! Parliament!

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razzmataz
I remember back in the day, when friendster was first starting up. Some users
like to have what you could refer to as 'gag' accounts, named things like
"Root of All Evil". The people of friendster really didn't like that, and
tried to squash all those accounts. I think it kind of streisanded them a
little bit all those years ago.

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mostly_harmless
for anyone curious: 'streisanded' refers to the streisand effect
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect>

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yllus
I wonder if they'd do better to totally rebrand the site and shrug off the
stink of "abandoned social networking website".

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adamokane
Is there a benefit to using the Friendster brand? Isn't it universally known
as could-have-been social network? Why not just use whatever their resources
are to start something fresh?

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esrauch
Simple name recognition is enough to get a lot of people to trust your site.
People are a lot more willing to "log in with facebook" on frindster.com than
they are on "Hi5.com".

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rmason
Why not just promote the new Friendster as a place to play games and soft
pedal the whole social networking past?

Would the site be more successful if they'd chosen a different domain name?

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jc4p
If they had chosen a new domain name they'd have nothing to separate them for
the failing Hi5.com, which went from attempting to be a social network to
doing the exact same thing this new Friendster is doing (logging in by
Facebook and playing games).

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ChrisArchitect
"living the game" - angle does immediately speak alot to me as something that
is not FB and not G+ etc. Gamers like their other world/networks to exist on.

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tapvt
Social game platform with multiple profiles? Friendster? It's already a
bizarre morning.

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pug
I like that you can swap avatars based on mood. Reminds me of the good ol'
days of LiveJournal.

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daimyoyo
Does this mean soon I can start ordering groceries online and have them
delivered?

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ignifero
So, they lost the social graph game and now focus on the popular social game
market. It's what zynga failed to do until now. There's huge audience and the
monetization is guaranteed if they enroll virtual currency. if they can prove
they can gain traction and provide a platform that is easy to convert to, I'm
game.

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r00fus
Wait, but Facebook credits are virtual currency that are leveraged by Zynga.

Without a "farmville" styled killer app, Friendster isn't going very far.

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ignifero
They should have launched with a big social game player (obviously not zynga,
who has an agreement with Facebook). However there are thousands of
independent developers, and remember there were many killer apps before zynga
came along.

