27 April, 2011
By Greg Morgan
The social network pioneer Friendster is calling it a day, announcing May 31 as its last day of operation. Instead, the folks at Friendster are putting their energy into social gaming and entertainment, where they hope to become “the social gaming destination of choice”.
While all user accounts will be kept alive, Friendster will be deleting user photos, comments, blog posts, and profile content. For any users who are interested in preserving their personal data, a tool called the Friendster Exporter is available to export profile information directly to personal hard drives.
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 URL http://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 has been a slow but sure demise for Friendster for many years now, first losing out to MySpace and then to Facebook. After Facebook became the default social networking service in the west, Friendster diverted their attention towards the Southeast Asian market, although even there the mighty Facebook empire is taking over.
Friendster launched their website back in 2003, which was the social networking dark ages compared to today. It quickly became a popular site, with three million users signing on by the fall. Along with being one of the first truly global social networking websites, Friendster also became famous for the phenomenon of “fake profiles”, with profiles dedicated to “God” and “Homer Simpson” among others.
Friendster was recently acquired by a Malaysian company called MOL Global in 2009 for $40 million. The CEO of MOL Global says that the new Friendster service will be repositioned as a social entertainment site, with focus on playing games and listening to music. The new Friendster service will focus mainly on users in Asia.
