Friendster is an Internet social network service. The Friendster site was founded in Mountain View, California, United States by Jonathan Abrams in March 2002 and is privately owned. Friendster is based on the Circle of Friends and Web of Friends techniques for networking individuals in virtual communities and demonstrates the small world phenomenon.Fact: date=September 2008 It currently has more than 70 million members worldwide and is mostly used in Asia . Based on Alexa.com, Friendster ranked 2nd most visited website in the Philippines while Yahoo! is the most visited website in the Philippines, and third party friendster-layouts.com is 16th. It is estimated that nearly 90 percent of internet users in the Philippines have Friendster accounts. David Jones, vice president for global marketing of Friendster, said that "the biggest percentage of users is from the Philippines, clocking in with 39 percent of the site's traffic."

History

Friendster was funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Benchmark Capital in October 2003 with a reported valuation of $53 million.

In April 2004, Abrams was removed as Chief Executive Officer and Jeff Koogle took over as interim CEO. Koogle previously served as President and CEO at Yahoo!. Koogle was replaced by Scott Sassa in June 2004, left in May 2005, and was replaced by Taek Kwon. Taek Kwon was succeeded by Kent Lindstrom.

Google offered to buy Friendster in 2003. Friendster, however, refused the offer.

Patent

Based on a June 16, 2003 application, Friendster was awarded a patent in 2006 for a method and apparatus for calculating, displaying and acting upon relationships in a social network. Dubbed the Web of Friends because the method combines the Circle of Friends with the Web of Contacts, the system collects descriptive data about various individuals and allows those individuals to indicate other individuals with whom they have a personal relationship. The descriptive data and the relationship data are integrated and processed to reveal the series of social relationships connecting any two individuals within a social network. The pathways connecting any two individuals can be displayed. Further, the social network itself can be displayed to any number of degrees of separation. A user of the system can determine the optimal relationship path (i.e., contact pathway) to reach desired individuals. A communications tool allows individuals in the system to be introduced (or introduce themselves) and initiate direct communication.

Based on a June 27, 2008 application, Friendster, the 7th largest website in the world and top social network in Asia, announced that its users in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines will soon be able to subscribe to Friendster Text Alerts. When launched, Users are required to register the use of Friendster Text Alerts by entering their mobile number details and selecting which mobile text alerts they wish to receive on their Friendster settings page. Users will then be able to receive text message alerts for friend requests, new messages, comments, bulletins and more or when such activity takes place within their network of friends on Friendster, they will receive an SMS text message on their mobile phone. Users will also be able to respond, share and communicate on Friendster by sending a text message to Friendster to update content on their profile, send messages, and reply to friend requests. This service is not chargeable, but users are still subject to text messaging usage fees of their telephone and wireless service provider. Although no specific dates have been given yet to launch Friendster Text Alerts but it's understood it could happen in the coming weeks.