Friendster is, however, letting users download their information before they obliterate it. They’ve made an app available that lets users export all of that precious Friendster data. On the site’s help center, it says:

The Friendster Exporter is an app that helps you download or export your current Friendster information, including your profile information, your friends list, your photos, messages, comments, testimonials, shoutouts, blogs and groups. To install this app, click here or type the following URLhttp://apps.friendster.com/exporter on your browser, then follow the instructions.

If you do not wish to keep all this history or information, then you do not need to do anything. Whether you use the Exporter or not, your Friendster account will not be deleted. Your list of friends will be preserved, along with your basic profile information. Your wallet and games details will also remain unchanged.

It’s clear that Friendster’s chances of winning the social network market share game have been pretty slim for a long time now. The company (acquired in 2009, by MOL Global) seems to be officially conceding to this fact. MySpace did this recently when it got more integrated with Facebook too.

If you go to Friendster now, it’s all about gaming.

Last summer, Facebook paid a reported $40 million to acquire some Friendster patents, which could have helped the company prevent some lawsuits.

Although everything was kept hush-hush at the time, late yesterday, Owen Thomas was able to point to a United States Patent and Trademark Office page documenting the move.  It proves that seven patents and 11 patent applications changed hands in mid-May, when Facebook must have been negotiating its Facebook Credits deal with Friendster owner MOL Global.

As for what the patents cover, the first handful of titles are "Multimedia aggregation in an online social network," "Proximity search methods using tiles to represent geographical zones," "Method for sharing relationship information stored in a social network database with third party databases," "Compatibility scoring of users in a social network," and "System and method for managing connections in an online social network."

Then the last couple are "Method of inducing content uploads in a social network" and "System, method and apparatus for connecting users in an online computer system based on their relationships within social networks."

Meanwhile, it was Liz Gannes who was able to pinpoint the purchase price at $40 million.

This represents an interesting move on Facebook’s part.  Again, as a purely defensive measure, it makes a certain amount of sense.  But owning these patents could also help the company go after Google if it becomes too much of a threat in the social space, or Facebook might be putting itself on firmer legal ground in preparation for an IPO.

Friendster has over 90 million registered users, and about 90 percent of its daily traffic comes from Southeast Asia, so the arrangement is a rather significant deal.  Yahoo stands to benefit as Friendster is putting ads for Yahoo services all over users’ homepages and profile pages.  Then Yahoo will receive some additional exposure when Friendster incorporates its search results.

As for what Friendster gets out of the equation, a Friendster application has already been granted a spot on the Yahoo homepages in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore.  Plus, Friendster users are supposed to obtain the option to link a Friendster account to a Yahoo account.

Both sides seem more than pleased about the arrangement.  Ken Mandel, the vice president and managing director of Yahoo Southeast Asia, said in a statement, "Working together with Friendster ensures Yahoo! remains relevant to people by offering the best online content and experiences."

He then added, "This is a major milestone in the Yahoo! Open Strategy, our combined services will enrich the online environment allowing people to get more done faster and in a single place."

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 Richard Kimber

Yes, you may not see too much about this due to Obama mania, but then again, Friendster’s timing helped ensure that bigger companies like Google and Yahoo weren’t simultaneously releasing important products.  So, anyway – Friendster’s got new digs in both Singapore and Australia.  It’s adding employees in the Philippines, too.

Richard Kimber, Friendster’s CEO, explained the moves in a statement by saying, "The expansion of our team, offices and sales partnerships in Asia not only sets 2009 up to be an exciting year, but helps us pursue the necessary monetization opportunities available to Friendster in our core Asian markets."

He then stuck to the "bold" theme by continuing, "As we move deeper into 2009, we will continue to build upon our direct sales, product, engineering, operations, marketing and finance teams to execute on our strategy and unwavering focus on Asia Pacific."

Kimber joined Friendster in August, and the social network received $20 million in funding at the same time.  At this rate, Facebook and MySpace might be safe for a while yet, but Friendster’s other competitors could be getting nervous.

"For the developers that have invested resources in developing and launching a Facebook app, Friendster has now made it very easy for them to ‘port’ these applications to Friendster, enabling them to tap into Friendster’s 80 million users," said David Jones, vice president of global marketing for Friendster. "For Web 2.0 companies that have developed apps using Facebook and OpenSocial APIs, they now have the flexibility to choose between approaches when launching applications on Friendster."

Said companies will be interested to know that Friendster is the biggest social network in Asia, so this news probably shouldn’t be taken too lightly. 60 out of 80 million of Frienster’s users are in Asia. There is also the fact that Friendster’s user base does not overlap significantly with other social networks, so developers would potentially be reaching a whole lot more people than if they were just putting their apps on Facebook, for example. Friendster only has 22% overlap with Facebook, and is a top 10 global website and the 3rd largest social network in the world in terms of traffic, with over 19.4 billion page views a month.

Justin Smith at Inside Facebook notes, "Friendster is less restrictive about which parts of the application can be monetized. Developers can put ads on any real estate they control, including the profile page."

It certainly sounds like a great opportunity for developers looking to take their applications global. Facebook’s opening of an international headquarters in Dublin may lead to other interesting opportunities down the road as well.

Richard Kimber, Google’s regional managing director of South East Asia, has joined Friendster as its CEO.  IDG Ventures must have a great deal of confidence in his abilities as it led a new $20 million round of funding.  Notable entities like Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, and Kleiner Perkins also contributed.

 Richard Kimber

Kimber stated as a result, "Friendster is growing at an enormous rate in Asia Pacific and is clearly leading the competition. . . .  I look forward to growing our business further as we continue our global growth and strong focus on Asia."  All – or at least most – of his company’s focus seems to be concentrated on this region.

That’s not a bad strategy, either, as there’s plenty of money in Asia and MySpace and Facebook have yet to establish significant footholds.  An effort to (re)establish Friendster in the U.S. right now might only waste cash.

So we’ll see what happens.  On a global scale, June comScore data ranked Friendster ninth in terms of total traffic, total time spent, and user engagement.

Why aren’t they?

1. They didn’t take care of PR and didn’t take care of bloggers. Hmmm, Facebook is doing exactly the same thing. Several people at the dinner tonight noted that Facebook hasn’t responded to claims that Facebook’s employees are spying on data that the public doesn’t have access to. And that’s just one PR complaint.

2. They kicked people out that they didn’t like. Hmmm, Facebook is doing exactly the same thing.

3. They didn’t respond to new competitors who took away their coolness. Facebook? They are about to meet their biggest competition yet.

Last night I was at a dinner for Hugh Macleod and Owen Michaels. There was talk of an earthquake. No, not the 5.6 one centered near San Jose. The fact that Google is about to jump into the social networking world. TechCrunch caused the shockwave of the year with that one.

One name that’s on the Google announcement, Plaxo, tells me that Google is looking to build a “social graph” that’s open and doesn’t have walls keeping developers from playing. They are looking to “Friendster” Facebook.

Add into this last week’s little “Vic Gundotra” dinner and I’m already seeing a trend: Google is going full bore after influentials, bloggers, and other “new media” developers who need a social network as part of their efforts to remain competitive.

Think about it. Nearly every cool Web property lately has a social network. Upcoming.org, Flickr, Yelp, Channel 9, etc. All have their own proprietary social networks.

Look at MySpace and Facebook. Both don’t solve that problem.

Will Google? And, by helping out Web 2.0 developers and other influentials (Facebook calls them “whales”) will Google cut off Facebook’s PR air supply (which is proving quite lucrative)?

Those are things I’m going to focus on for the next few days.

Some things we still need answers on:

1. Is this new Google social network really fun to use like Facebook is?

2. Does it beat Facebook’s aesthetics?

3. Can the social graph be componetized so that I could add a social network to my blog, for instance?

4. Does the development platform beat Facebook’s? (Can I see which apps my friends have loaded, is the key question).

5. Does it build a really open social graph?

6. If Google does match Facebook’s utility (really easy: just clone the hell out of it but give the “whales” more than 5,000 friends. I’ve talked with many celebrities and businesses and they say 5,000 simply isn’t enough which is why many of them are forced to stay on MySpace) do they allow new kinds of social ads?

It’s going to be an interesting next month getting around to all these companies again and seeing what they plan to do.

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Fan Profiles are a separate account from a standard Friendster profile and is listed differently in friends lists.  Fan profiles have more features including mass email capabilities, contact list management and are optimized to appear in Google and Yahoo search results.

"Friendster is making a clear distinction between ‘friends’ and ‘fans,’ which allows Fan Profile owners to build a genuine fan base," said Jeff Roberto, marketing director at Friendster. "We’re giving entities access to a feature set that promotes them, even when they’re not online."

Friendster has lost some of its market share to other social networks including MySpace and Facebook. This newest feature will probably not help the company to gain the ground it hopes it will. That being said they do have a solid presence in the Asia-Pacific region and the company launched a Chinese version of the site this past week.

Facebook, Friendster Signal Changing Tide

Like Internet dating in its infancy, social networks have graduated from something for the kids (with dating, it was the geeks) to a normalized part of society. Critics had similar concerns about Rock N Roll in its day, and short skirts, and tie-dye, and jazz and dancing.

Most likely there was a time when daily hygiene was tantamount to snobbery. Things change with acceptance. MySpace exchanged one stigma for another, immediately branded a site for teenyboppers, and then the fishing hole to catch a predator.

Despite that, and despite the concern that such a youthful audience replete with perverts would fizzle out over time, the site has continued to grow, even to the point that the majority of the 109.5 million visitors to MySpace users are now over 35, both according to comScore.

Of course, you know what happens when the grownups raid your secret hangout, right? The He-Man Womun-Haterz Club can’t thrive in a cloud of perfume, the mice can’t play with the cat around…choose whichever cliché you wish.

You might note also though that Rupert Murdoch is rumored to be looking for a way out, if he can exchange MySpace for a nice chunk of Yahoo.    

Anyone not signing up for MySpace these days (really, is there anybody?) are defecting to Facebook, Friendster, and Bebo. It’s not really defecting as much as it is double dipping, though. Over half of social network users maintain multiple profiles, flitting from network to network the way they would rooms at a party.

In the past six months, after Facebook opened up to non-collegiates and developers, the site has more than doubled in number of unique visitors, growing from 23 million users in December 2006 to 47 million in May 2007. During the same period, Bebo jumped from just under 11 million visitors to 17 million.

But the most explosive recent growth has been, surprisingly, from Friendster, a company that just so happens was awarded a US patent on social networking, signifying how long they’ve been in this game. The site has steadily grown since December from 18.7 million visitors to 24.8 million.

While that’s less than the others in terms of visitors, the site, and VentureBeat, point to the page views, spiking by 40 percent just last month to 9 billion. The company attributes the sudden spike to "fixing" the technology that stymied its growth in 2004, just as the meteoric rise of MySpace was to occur.

Friendster’s graph server, which made it impossible to manage four quadrillion factors (we’re assuming Venture Beat is using not using that number as hyperbole), has been revamped to more easily show how users are linked to their friends, and by what degree of separation, similar to a feature used on LinkedIn. But the main result of this revamp is that users are better able to track what’s going on with their friends, thus increasing page views per user.

While that may seem like cheating, it’s growth nonetheless, and of the others in the top seven networks – HI5, Tagged, and Piczo – Friendster is the only one not stagnant or declining over the past half-year. 

So what happens next? Who knows for sure? It seems Murdoch is thinking of jumping ship, perhaps just for a better opportunity, or it could be he detects the changing tide. Maybe Facebook is catching up too fast. Maybe Friendster is poised to sue the whole lot of them.

Or maybe it’s just the natural, social flux of things.

Of course, Matt also explains most of the reason for that growth by saying the site has adopted similar techniques as are used by Facebook and MySpace — which generates a mind-boggling 3 billion page views every day — including forcing you to click multiple times to get anywhere. Is that something to be proud of? Not in my book. There’s also a table in Matt’s post that tells a different story — and what I think is a far more worthwhile one when comparing sites: it’s a table of unique visitors at the different social networks.

Over the past six months, Friendster’s unique visitor numbers have grown by about 30 per cent, while MySpace’s have grown by about 20 per cent. And Facebook.com? Over 100 per cent in the same period, and close to 30 per cent in the last month alone. To me, that’s the whole story right there — something I wish Megan McCarthy had pointed out at Valleywag instead of just pointing to Matt’s post. I wish we could get away from the focus on page views.

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