Update: It’s live. You can view the new Friendster redesign at Friendster.com.
Friendster, the Californian-based social networking site that once dominated the Asia/Pacific region will be sold to an Asian buyer for at least $100 million by the end of this month, said a source who declined to be identified as the information was not yet public, according to Reuters.
Friendster chief executive Richard Kimber told Reuters the majority of suitors for the firm were Asian buyers.
“We have a shortlist at this point that we are negotiating with,” Kimber said. Investment bank Morgan Stanley has been hired to find a party interested in acquiring the company or at least some of its assets, Kimber said.
Among the short-listed bidders were Tencent Holdings, China’s largest Internet firm by market value at $35 billion, and social networking giant Facebook but was turned down due to competition and intellectual property issues, the source said.
In 2003, Friendster received a $30 million buyout offer from Google, which they declined. Instead, Friendster chose to accept $13 million in fresh investments from venture capital firms, according to two VC insiders familiar with the events.
In a bid to steal dominance from rival Facebook in the Asia/Pacific region, Friendster will be giving itself a newer, younger look targeted at the 16- to 24-year-old demographic. The redesign, which goes live on Friday (December 4), aims to place more emphasis on 3 pillars: Simple, Fun and Personal. Apparently, they’re trying to make it more customizable than Facebook, enabling users to select customizable skins for their profile pages. For example, they can change the background color of pages with a single click.
According to Ian Stewart, the company’s Asia head, Friendster will roll out features meant to keep youths hooked, including a “shout out” panel for broadcasting status messages, a “stream” of friends’ updates, a “solid” photo album, a multimedia-capable inbox, birthday calendar and “wallet” feature to buy e-gifts for friends.
Friendster, one of the world’s earliest social networking website, has about 75 million users, a far cry from Facebook, which recently crossed the 350 million milestone. It was estimated that 80 per cent of its users are based in Asia.
Sources: Reuters, ZDNet Asia