Friendster Buzz: Recently Bought by Malaysian Tycoon Vincent Tan

A certain Malaysian tycoon, Vincent Tan, has bought out Friendster. I first saw the news from Dexter Panganiban's blog entry on TechAtHand.net. Mr. Panganiban quotes from the original press statement on Yahoo Finance:

Tan's online payment systems business will buy 100 percent of Friendster through an affiliate company, according to a joint statement Thursday.

The two companies will be combined so Tan's business empire can sell content such as games, movies, music and other products to Friendster's 115 million members, using his company's electronic payments system. Tan's businesses include retail franchises in Southeast Asia such as Starbucks, 7-Eleven, Borders, Krispy Kreme, and Wendy's.

The price for Friendster wasn't disclosed but the combined entity will have annual revenue of about $110 million.

"We are creating a unique company that will be well positioned to provide content to a huge, regional user base here in Southeast Asia," the statement said.

MalaysiaKini.com provides a bit more detail:

California-based online social networking pioneer Friendster has accepted a buyout from MOL Global, the companies announced today, saying the site would shift into e-commerce.

The Friendster blog confirms all this and adds:

"The merger with Friendster will continue to transform the social networking industry, combining a highly intuitive and successful social media site and online marketing channel with an integrated payment platform and content network which includes games, goods, gifts, music and video. We are creating a unique company that will be well positioned to provide content to a huge, regional user base, here in Southeast Asia,” said Ganesh Kumar Bangah, president and chief executive officer of MOL.

MOL uses the leverage of a network of over 500,000 physical and virtual payment channels across 75 countries worldwide to collect payments for content and services. Its core markets are Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and India. MOL has relationships with over 70 online game publishers that have a suite of over 200 online game titles. It also has partnerships with music, movie and video content owners and distributors across the region.

“Friendster and MOL are both industry pioneers and are close partners. This combination is a natural progression of our relationship and will be an industry-changing event,” said Richard Kimber, chief executive officer at Friendster. “The new combined entity gives Friendster the kind of financial backing, retail distribution, and e-commerce infrastructure that will enable us to accelerate our strategy and create a locally relevant, fun experience for our users in Asia, both on and offline."

Could this be the driver of Friendster's relaunch on "Connecting Smiles?" Will the relaunch and/or Mr. Tan's acquisition bring new life to the seemingly stagnant social network?

I have my doubts. But anything can happen nowadays. Who expected two years ago that Facebook would reach 7.0+ mio Philippine users, and become both the number one social network & number one social network in the Philippines that it is today?

Blogger, Plurk, Delicious, Multiply, Facebook... A Surge in Social Networking

Today, I open my first Blogger account. In fact, it's my first official blog. I've had my Windows Live Spaces for about two years now, and it used to be my personal blog when I was in Chicago, but I realized it was difficult to get an audience in Live Spaces. Really difficult. And I got too busy with other things to keep on blogging.

Fast forward to today: My work requires me to (1) keep in touch with the online world and what's new out there, (2) create a public professional profile online as the online face of the agency, and (3) become an authority in creating digital efforts for my clients. I work in the Manila office of Leo Burnett / Arc Worldwide as the head of the Digital CRM team. My team brings into the agency the expertise of using digital channels to deliver CRM (Customer Relationship Marketing) principles into the marketing mix of our clients. But enough about that for now.

Why Blogger? I still have to figure that one out. Blogger used to be Blogspot till around 2003 when Google bought the company. Some of my friends use Wordpress, which is supposedly ranked #1 (See review here). And then others use LiveJournal. All these three are free, easy-to-use and powerful tools. I decided to use Blogger because some of my closest blogger friends are on it. Ergo, it will be easier to connect to them and their blogs.

Yes, I'm now a sucker for social networking. I didn't used to be. I remember the time when everybody in Manila was raving about Friendster and collecting friends online. And I refused to follow. I didn't like the idea of having an online profile to promote yourself. Why would you if had a very active social life in the real world, right? Oh, but I was connected alright. I had Yahoo Messenger, Skype, and my chat friends on some chat sites. I had my mobile phone book to SMS anyone I knew. And I had my trusty email address book to keep in touch. But times have changed. And it's changing faster and faster. And a mid-30s guy needs to keep pace or get left behind.

For me it all happened in the past two years. Before I left for Chicago, I had already set up my Friendster profile but with virtually nothing on it. I set up my Windows Live Spaces, as I mentioned earlier, to start a personal blog. But also because Microsoft was a client of mine at that time. It was in Hong Kong after my Chicago stint that things started to pick up for me. My new-found friends were using Multiply to share online content (links, photos, videos, and personal thoughts) with each other. I had to join to be part of the loop. Then an officemate of mine practically forced me to create a Facebook account because, as she said, it was fun. And it sure was. I quickly found the friends and family I left in Manila and elsewhere in these social networks. Or they quickly found me.

A few years ago, I had a problem: I was an outta-sight-outta-mind kind of guy. If I didn't see you, if you didn't call, I was out of touch. Today, because of social networking, I get glimpses of what's happening with my cousin living in California, with my high school classmate on a trip to Italy, with an old barkada who has moved to New Zealand, and with an old fling living in Chicago. And, nowadays, I remember birthdays much much more often. Social networks have made this big world much smaller.

On a regular day, I check my Facebook and Multiply every quarter hour on the average. My Friendster is a grave site. And there's always something new to discover online everyday.

Last week I created my Plurk account. Plurk describes itself as "a social journey for your life." In a nutshell, it's the new Twitter plus karma points. Twitter never really took off in this country. At least not that I know of. Maybe Plurk will. We'll see.

Today also I created my Delicious account. Delicious is about social bookmarking. It extends the bookmarking functions in your browser to something online which you can share with others. Really interesting concept, but I still have to find it's purpose in my human life. Maybe I'll write about that too in the future. Maybe not.

Let me end this first post by welcoming you to this blog. Join me in my journey into what's new online, and offline. And maybe you'll learn a new thing or two in the process. Feel free to comment and contribute. I like conversation more than rhetoric. That's your part. 'Till next time.