Despite the “cool factor” of Facebook and its popularly-touted extremely usable interface, Friendster is still the undeniable king of social networks in Asia, especially the Philippines. Even toddlers have Friendster profiles leaving comments for their ninong and ninangs (godparents).
With new leadership under ex-Google Managing Director for Sales and Operations for Southeast Asia Richard Kimber taking on the CEO role and a $20 million infusion from a recent round led by IDG Ventures, Friendster just may be able to redeem the #1 social network crown. 
Why Friendster is still No. 1 in the Philippines then till now could be attributed to the first mover advantage. I mention Facebook to not-so-tech-savvy friends and they all say FB’s hard to use! Friendster has already won the hearts of the Filipinos with everyone already on it, a quick source of gossip (“chismis”) via lurking - where your high school friends are working now? Who’s still single, single again, and getting married? New friendships and even romantic relationships are nurtured by exchanging cellphone numbers and “Add mo ko sa Friendster, ha!” (“You have to add me on Friendster”).
Friendster will be focusing more on Asia. Maybe there’s time for Friendster to revamp its image with the techie Asians and specifically address the concerns of its Asian demographic. Looking back on my 5+ years as a Friendster user, let me share some insights on the latest moves by Friendster.
- Lose the obtrusive ads on Friendster free blogs. It’s blasphemous to the absolutely awesome Typepad system by Six Apart to be so painful to look at. If ads on Vox and LiveJournal free accounts can be a little bit more put-together, Friendster should be able to integrate their ads more seamlessly.
- Educate Friendster sponsors how advertising in new media works. Friendster recently ran a Pantene campaign—on the wallpaper of their homepage. Yes, Gretchen Barretto and the other fair-skinned Pantene girls screamed for attention against the black backdrop. I immediately signed out and didn’t come back for a couple of weeks. It’s nice to see Friendster generating ad revenue and P&G embracing social media as an advertising channel but that was hardly the way to reach out. I wonder how Friendster and P&G measured ROI from that campaign.
- Encourage development of apps better suited to the Filipino/Asian demographic. Take a tip from the hit TV shows. Wowowee and Deal or No Deal. Filipinos love gossip, game shows, celebrities. And Filipinos are everywhere…
- Create an app directory dedicated to food—and make developers come up with the apps already! Click the City, Munchpunch, Manila Guide, Spot.ph are all clamoring for the healthy appetite of Pinoys. The power of the social network combined with their rich content will do wonders for Pinoy recipes and dining.
- Assist the single and looking. Yes, there’s a search function—but the thousands of yuppies looking for love, too embarrassed to use something like shaadi.com could use a nudge in the right direction. An intelligent “Hot or Not?” app could be a start.
- How come I can’t go straight to Friendster Classifieds (formerly Pusit) using my Friendster profile? There are hundreds of entrepreneurial Filipinos building their mini-enterprises on Multiply, despite the fact that ALL their friends are on the Friendster network. If order placement and mobile payments via GCash and Smart Money could be simpler on Friendster, they’d have more reason to stay.
- Kudos on the mobile front! Millions of mobile phone users, millions of Filipinos addicted to Friendster (parallel to how American yuppies and teens just use Facebook as their email), Friendster Mobile could be a frequent past-time of 3g phone users. But it’s still a matter of making the users happy with the interface because they want the desktop version on their mobile browser instead (via comments on Mashable).
- Start a Fund for Friendster App Developers Friendster should funnel a portion of that $20 million round to new UX designers and testers as well as to encourage more developers to make apps for their platform ala-FB Fund. The Friendster Developer TOS already allows for developers to generate revenue without requiring a share—yet either Filipino developers don’t know about this or don’t find it yet worth the trouble. The Friendster Developer Fund/Competition could give Pinoy developers an extra incentive to make useful apps that maximize the viral nature of Friendster.
Add me on Friendster, okay? Know any good Friendster apps?
Photo via ABC
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