Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you they are all uploading Friendster.
In a bid to serve its more than 58 million users worldwide, Friendster, the world’s number one social network, has introduced several innovations in its application.
Friendster launched a directory of over 180 applications on and off the Friendster.com website last December to enhance their features. These applications called “widgets” have been integrated into the Friendster user experience by developers leveraging Friendster Developer Program that was released as a pilot program last Oct. 25 and now fully developed at http://www.friendster.com/developer.
Today’s number one social network in Asia and the third largest branded social network in the world, Friendster is among the first major global social networks to launch a developer platform and rich directory of applications for its users within a production environment.
Others have announced plans or released documentations but have not launched, while others have a limited number of applications available for their users.
“We are aggressively trying to improve our applications to cater to all our users worldwide,” said David Jones, Friendster VP for global marketing.
With over 43 million registered users in Asia, Friendster boasts 24.5 million monthly unique visitors from the Asia-Pacific region and is popular in more than 75 countries, the Philippines included.
“We are campaigning here (Philippines) because obviously the awareness level of the Filipinos are on a record high and we want them to be familiarized with our new applications that they will surely enjoy,” Jones said.
To further boost its website, Friendster is now available in leading languages and welcomes and encourages developers to build applications in languages other than English. For example, Yobo.com has integrated its Chinese-language music discovery and sharing application into Friendster using the Friendster Developer Program.
Additional non-English language applications are under development and will be deployed in the weeks and months ahead.
Innovations
Among the features that Friendster improved were the multiple languages that were launched recently, among them Chinese (both traditional and simplified), Japanese, Korean and Spanish, to navigate the site, enter contents and use the features.
The fan profile was also enhanced to enable entities like musicians, artists, models, non-profits, athletes, websites and venues to build a fan base.
Developers can now build and deploy applications and widgets on top of the Friendster global social networking platform.
“There are endless possibilities out there that are open to developers, including key features that will surely be a hit among users,” explained Iannis Hanen, Friendster software architect.
The Connection “engine,” which is another added feature, will connect people to friends, schoolmates, groups and interests that are important to them, while the Recent Network Activity will provide a consolidated view of real-time updates about everyone and everything within a user’s network to the user’s logged-in home page and via e-mail.
Schools will enable users to add a school or college and quickly connect to current and past schoolmates — an innovation that will surely be met with great enthusiasm by at least three-fourths of Friendster users worldwide.
According to statistics, the average age of Friendster users in Asia alone is primarily 16 to 30, 55 percent of whom are females and the rest males.
Another new, well received feature was Classified, which allows users to search and post listings for free and access locally targeted classifieds.
Friendster Developer Program
For developers, the Friendster Developer Program is designed to provide them with several key features and benefits that include the freedom to monetize applications using virtually any model for monetization, with no revenue sharing with Friendster required.
Unlike other social networks, ads and monetization will be allowed anywhere in the application and are not restricted to rarely used detail or configuration pages.
The developer program also includes APIs compatible with those used throughout the industry. As a result, existing applications on other social networks can easily be imported to Friendster.
Existing flash or HTM: widgets/applications used on other social networks are also supported on Friendster without requiring developers to invest efforts to modify their design or user experience.
Additionally, when the OpenSocial APIs are completed, Friendster will support them, allowing OpenSocial applications to be used with Friendster.
Lastly, Friendster released its developer program documentation, testing environment and schedule in advance to provide equal opportunity for developers around the world to compete for mindshare and adoption by its more than 58 million users.
To date, six companies have piloted the Friendster Developer Program in the past several months, namely Rockyou, Slide.com, Clearspring, Imeem, Jangi, and Gbox.
Addressing pressing issues
Last week, several news items came out identifying some problems on fan profiles, particularly impostors creating profiles.
Several prominent personalities in the country, including no less than the President, were found out to have multiple fake profiles, worrying some sectors.
Asked about this, Jones said they cannot police the Friendster users, but said this can be avoided by reporting such cases.
“We are aware of the problem and we are doing our best to evaluate it. If an impostor creates a fake profile we may not be able to know it, but the users themselves, especially whose who are victimized, can report it and we can ban the profile,” Jones said.
“Other than this, the only way to solve such a problem is to be vigilant,” he added.
But the downside is still overwhelmed by the tremendous improvement and enhanced promotional features that include advanced e-mail capabilities, contact list management, unlimited fan base aggregation and more.
Other new applications include Directory, “My Network Activity” Module, Forward to Friend, and Browsing Profile Pages.
In all, these applications are designed to gain more mileage in an ever-competing industry that has grown by leaps and bounds. This only bears testament to the increasing Friendster base, which has gained more than 22 million registered users and 11 million monthly unique visitors. To date, over 70,000 users register on Friendster every day.