Friendster Continues Asia Focus; Plans Include Expanding Ad Sales Deals, Hiring
This story was written by David Kaplan.
Although Friendster has long been eclipsed in the U.S. by MySpace and Facebook, it has never gone away; it just traveled overseas, mainly to Asia where it continues to be popular. The social net is continuing its Asia/Pacific buildup with new offices in Singapore and Sydney, Australia. The company has also made some small hires in the Philippines, noting that this year, 80 percent of Friendster's staff additions will be made in Asia.While Friendster has be one of the leading social netsat least in terms of trafficin Asia for the past few years, it has still been challenged when it comes to generating profit from advertising to its growing audience. The company hopes to change that with the addition of Pixel Media to handle ad sales for Friendster in Singapore, where the company claims 1 million monthly uniques. Pixel had already been working with the company in the Philippines, where it claims 3.6 million uniques. In indonesia, Friendster's ad sales will be powered by Admax. On top of these additions, Friendster also released something of a wish list for other areas it wants to staff up this year, including direct sales, product, engineering, operations, marketing and finance. Release
By David Kaplan