Friendster Deploys OpenSocial Support for Benefit of 75 Million Users, Developers...

Friendster Deploys OpenSocial Support for Benefit of 75 Million Users,
Developers and Industry
OpenSocial Developers Can Now Reach the Largest Social Networking User Base in
Asia

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Friendster, Inc.
(http://www.friendster.com), a top-10 global website based on traffic and the
#1 social network in Asia,* today announced that it has deployed the
OpenSocial standard application programming interfaces (APIs) as part of the
Friendster Developer Program. Companies and individual developers can now use
the OpenSocial standard to introduce their applications, or features, to
Friendster's 75 million users around the world.
OpenSocial support is a significant enhancement and extension to the
successful Friendster Developer Program, launched in late 2007. Friendster was
only the second major social network to launch a robust developer platform,
and since then, the Friendster Developer Program has been successful with both
users and developers alike. Since its launch, over 10 million unique users
have added "apps," most users add several apps, and about half a million apps
are being added by users to their profile pages each day. There are thousands
of developers registered for the Friendster Developer Program, there are about
2,000 members of the Friendster Developer Platform Group on Friendster, over
450 apps have been deployed on Friendster, and thousands more apps are
currently under development by third-party developers.
"With widespread support throughout the industry, OpenSocial has become a
de facto standard for developers of social applications. OpenSocial makes it
easier than ever for developers to build and distribute their applications
across multiple destination sites like Friendster. Developers can spend less
of their time on integrating and more of their time on building interesting,
useful, fun, and/or compelling features," said David Jones, vice president of
global marketing for Friendster. "Everybody wins - users gain access to new
features, developers can introduce their innovations to the massive user bases
of social networks, and social networks gain third-party features to continue
to drive up user engagement on social networks."
OpenSocial is a community-driven initiative that continues to evolve with
the help of many developers, websites, and companies, including Google.
Friendster, a founding member of the OpenSocial initiative, has deployed APIs
from version 0.7 of the OpenSocial specification, making it easy for existing
OpenSocial applications using version 0.7 to be launched on Friendster and
reach Friendster's over 75 million users. Friendster also plans to support
additional OpenSocial APIs in the coming months, including the new 0.8 APIs.
"We are pleased that Friendster has deployed OpenSocial APIs for the
benefit of users and developers alike," said David Glazer, director of
engineering at Google. "Friendster's launch is another major milestone in the
adoption and deployment of OpenSocial throughout the social web and around the
world. We're particularly excited that OpenSocial is helping Friendster bring
new social applications to users in Asia, and we look forward to seeing users
embrace these apps."
Developers are building apps on Friendster for several reasons:
-- Friendster is the only way for developers to reach 55 million users in
Asia on a single social network.
-- The Friendster Developer Program has a completely open revenue model.
It is free, there is no revenue share with Friendster, and virtually any
monetization model is allowed on Friendster. Ads are allowed anywhere in apps
-- unlike other social networks -- so developers can even place ads as part of
their app on the profile page for a dramatic increase in page views and
corresponding advertising revenues. Friendster is the only social network to
allow developer ads on the profile page.
-- The Friendster user base is mostly distinct from other social networks.
OpenSocial developers can reach tens of millions of new users because
Friendster's user base does not overlap much with those of other social
networks. For example, the highest overlap with any top social network is 18%,
so depending on the social network, at least 82% of Friendster's 57 million
monthly unique visitors in July are new users that developers cannot reach any
other way.**
-- It's easy. Developers reveal that it's straightforward to port an
existing app to Friendster.
-- Viral support has been built-in by Friendster for all apps. Friendster
has introduced several viral features to enable a user of an app to share it
with their friends, but in respectful, thoughtful ways, such as aggregating
these app invitations into a single email digest that is only received
periodically. As a result, friends aren't inundated with too many email
invitations to try new apps from their friends. And, users have a new setting
allowing them to control whether they receive these app invitations via email.
Developers can view the latest technical documentation, or register for
the program, at http://www.friendster.com/developer. Developers are also
encouraged to join the OpenSocial Friendster Developer group, at
http://www.friendster.com/group/tabmain.php?gid=1966730. To view the current
directory of third-party applications already launched on Friendster, go to
http://www.friendster.com/apps.
Friendster Leads in Asia and is a Top 10 Global Website
Friendster is the #1 social network in Asia, with over 55 million
registered users and 33 million monthly unique visitors from Asia.* In Asia,
Friendster is almost twice the size of any other social network.
Friendster is the 9th largest website and the 3rd largest social network
in the world in terms of traffic, with over 22.1 billion page views a month.*
Friendster is 1st in "user engagement" among the top five global social
networks with an average of 215 minutes per visitor per month.
About Friendster
With more than 75 million members worldwide, Friendster is a leading
global online social network. Friendster is focused on helping people stay in
touch with friends and discover new people and things that are important to
them. Online adults, 18 and up, choose Friendster to connect with friends,
family, school, social groups, activities and interests. Friendster prides
itself in delivering an easy-to-use, friendly and interactive environment
where users can easily connect with anyone around the world via
http://www.friendster.com or m.friendster.com from any Internet-ready mobile
device. Friendster has a growing portfolio of patents granted to the company
on social networking, with more expected over the next several months.
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Friendster is backed by Kleiner
Perkins Caufield & Byers, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, IDG Ventures and
individual investors. For more information, visit: http://www.friendster.com.
*comScore Media Metrix, June 2008
** Google Analytics and Friendster Internal Data, July 2008
SOURCE Friendster, Inc.

Lerin O'Neill of The Hoffman Agency, +1-408-832-7083 (m), +1-408-975-3037 (o),
press@friendster.com, for Friendster