Friendster

Friendster is a social gaming site that is based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It was previously  known as a social networking website.

Before the site was redesigned, the service allowed users to contact other members, maintain those contacts, and share online content and media with those contacts. Users could share videos, photos, messages and comments with other members via their profile and their network. It was considered one of the original and even the “granddaddy” of social networks. The service became popular in Southeast Asia and is a major site in that region of the world.

Friendster was founded by Canadian computer programmer Jonathan Abrams in 2002, before the wider adoption of My Space (2003), Face book (2004) and other social networking sites.
Available languages include English, Filipino, Thai, Malay, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Chinese, and Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. Friendster launched all language support on a single domain – www.friendster.com . Friendster is the first global online social network to support Asian languages and others on single domain so that users from around the world can talk to each other.
Friendster.com went live in 2002 and was adopted by three million users within the first few months. Friendster’s rapid success inspired a generation of niche social networking websites including dogster and Elfster.

As of 2008 Friendster had a membership base of more than 115 million registered users and continued to grow in Asia.
According to Alexia, the site has suffered an exponential decline in traffic in America since 2009. From a peak 40 ranking it reached 800 in November 2010. Most people have since attributed this decline to the rise of Face book, a rival social networking site.

Friendster has been an open site since August 2006 when it first began allowing widgets and content to be embedded in user profile pages through its developer program. Roughly 39 percent of Friendster’s users have widgets on their profile.

Friendster gives software developers access to APIS that utilize content and data within the Friendster network to build and deploy customizable applications on and off Friendster.

In June 2011, Friendster shifted from social networking site to social entertainment site which focus on gaming and entertainment. The accounts are unchanged and still existing. However, all comments, testimonials, shout outs, blogs, forums and groups that the users may have had in the past may no longer be part of their Friendster account.