Friendster is Alive and Well, Sort Of
Posted on 05. Mar, 2009 by Daniel Taylor in Internet
Slate.com is one of my favorite places on the internet, and not just because they think I'm an "eloquent and oft-quoted" blogger (despite the fact that the blog in question has sadly since been erased from the interwebs). Today they explore the social media wasteland that is Friendster and find, somewhat surprisingly, that not only are people still using it, but that people are actually still investing in it, in search of the burgeoning online Asian invasion:
But as seen in those weird transmissions to my inbox, Friendster does still exist. Despite the fact that Friendster trails Facebook, MySpace, and numerous other social-networking sites in the American market, the company continues to raise venture capital at an impressive clip, including a $20 million infusion last summer. Why are people still dumping cash into what looks like a social-networking graveyard? Because real human beings—plenty of them, actually—still log on to Friendster. It's just that now they're all logging on from Asia.
Check out the story here, and then check out your Friendster profile like I did for the first time in forever and realize after about 5 seconds why you abandoned it in the first place, then consider getting rid of your Myspace profile for the same reasons because Facebook is better now anyway, then realize that its probably better to just let be, in case someone from your past happens to want to find you, or in case you die and people want to lurk at the trivialities of your life, post-mortem, in search of what really made the "real you" then remember that when you die no one will probably care anyway.
My Friendster profile is still breathing and I check on it every once in awhile – a few weeks. I check my Facebook just as often and could definitely live without a social network account. But just to compare the two – Facebook’s features at the moment is definitely more engaging and I know for a fact that a lot of Friendster users in Asia also have Facebook accounts and find it more interesting.