Friendster

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Friendster is an internet social network service. The Friendster site was founded in Mountain View, California by Jonathan Abrams in 2002 and is privately owned. Friendster is based on the Circle of Friends technique for networking individuals in virtual communities and demonstrates the small world phenomenon.

Friendster was considered the top online social network service until around April 2004 when it was overtaken by MySpace in terms of page views, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. [1] Friendster has also received competition from all-in-one sites such as Windows Live Spaces, Yahoo! 360 and Facebook.

Google offered $30,000,000 to Friendster in 2003, but they were turned down.[2]

[edit] Usage

Generally speaking, the members of Friendster's service are young adults in Europe, North America, and Asia aged about 21 to 30. However, even that cannot be accurately defined as there are also many other users within other regions and age groups. The largest group of users of Friendster in a region may not have the same characteristics as that from other regions, as evidenced in the larger membership of teenagers than young adults in South East Asia especially in countries like the Philippines, India, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Recently, Friendster has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity with the English-speaking LGBT community.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Fakester

A fakester is a type of account profile found at Friendster. Fakesters are often created as a form of online fan club for bands, movies, celebrities, television book characters, and pets as well as activist groups. The administrators at Friendster first tried to discourage this practice, and later outright deleted 200,000+ accounts - many of which were pet accounts.[3]