Buzz Networker - Social Networking

Review: Friendster

by Kevin on June 18th, 2007

Site: Friendster.com

Members: Over 40 million registered users

Features:

Friendster, like most of the modern day social networking sites, has the common traits of most social networking sites: messaging, search feature, blogs, classifieds, schools, video submission, and forums.

Also included on your log in page is a friend updates section that lets the user know any new information about their friends, what they are fans of, bookmarks, birthdays, groups and school mates. It is a tabbed feature and is a lower tech version than what is offered on Facebook, which uses the update feature best.

Friendster’s blogging software is based off of Typepad’s blogging software, giving it the most robust blogging software on the social networking scene that I have seen thus far.

The search function on Friendster allows you to different ways to check out others users profiles, however it limits the results to 1,000 users, which is a pain when collecting data. Also when searching groups it doesn’t seem to apply a rhyme or reason to the order in which your search results come, making it cumbersome to navigate through.

Profiles can be customized to some extent, nothing on the level of MySpace though.

Review:

I was on Friendster originally a year after it launched, the site has changed a lot since then, incorporating a lot more of the popular social networking functions we see today. Originally it was THE social networking site before server issues and slow load times plagued the site leading to a mass exodus to MySpace.

Since then the company has changed some of the technology that they run on and brought in a new management staff. I still think the site runs pretty slow in comparison to other social networking sites, but it has noticeably improved since the “dark days”.

Marketing wise the search ability hurts a user in effectively data mining the site.

While still boasting a large US user base, Friendster has been fueled my expansion in Asia and other countries. It would be a solid second tier marketing option, there are bots available for it, which I will review in the upcoming weeks.

My Friendster account: here

Technorati Tags: social networking, site review, friendster

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