The long thought dead social media site “Friendster” is trying to reinvent it self as a social gaming platform. The old “IT” social media platform before Facebook, and before Myspace has decided that after it was no longer a player in the social media game, that it would use it’s fairly good name recognition to launch a gaming platform specifically designed for social gamers.

MOL Groups CEO, Ganesh Kumar Bangah, elaborated on Friendster’s change in business practices. “By leveraging on Friendster’s strongest asset in the form of its millions of users and harnessing MOL’s strength as a e-payments and content distributer, we were able to successfully redesign Friendster to become a social discovery and gaming platform, host to the largest online community in Southeast Asia.”

The new website which is listed as a “Beta” version features categories such as Role Playing, Shooting, Strategy, Puzzles, Card Games, Adventure, Arcade, and Simulation. Each category features several games and it seems as though Friendster has become a portal to these free to play flash games found in other places on the internet.

They will be having a relaunch event in Manila, The Philippines at the SM North Cyberzone Activity Area. COO Nikolai Galicia had this to say about the relaunch: “It is a joy to roll out Friendster’s inaugural event here, to a community that is continuously growing. We are committed in continually bringing the latest content and giving the most compelling rewards to our users.”

Pushing forward it will be interesting to see how Friendster deals with it’s new model, and if name recognition alone is enough to push this new platform.