Friendster, Largest Social Network In Asia, Now In Vietnamese

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, May 15 Friendster-Vietnamese


HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, May 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Friendster, Inc.
(http://www.friendster.com) today announced that Friendster.com is available
in Vietnamese, allowing Friendster users and visitors a greater choice of
languages with which to navigate the site, enter content and use Friendster's
complete set of social networking features. The 18 million Internet users in
Vietnam and Vietnamese around the world can now easily join and use
Friendster, the pioneer of social networking that is now the 8th largest
website globally of any kind based on traffic.(1)


(Photo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080515/AQTH053)


Friendster currently fully supports eight languages -- English,
Vietnamese, Indonesian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese,
Korean and Spanish. These languages represent over 67 percent of the world's
Internet users, or over three quarters of a billion Internet users in total.


"Since Friendster is the #1 social network in all of Asia and has more
than twice the users of any other social network in Asia, the Friendster
social networking experience clearly resonates with its 50 million users
across Asia," said David Jones, vice president of global marketing for
Friendster. "Now that Friendster.com is available in Vietnamese, the entire
country of Vietnam can now visit and use Friendster, see who's on Friendster,
invite their friends, and start using Friendster to express themselves and
share and communicate with friends and family globally."


In Asia, members use Friendster to find lost friends, keep in touch with
friends and family, make new friends, share photos and photo albums, send
messages, express themselves through their personalized profile page, write a
personal blog, start or participate in a group on a specific topic, become a
fan of their favorite artist or celebrity ("Fan Profiles"), post "shoutouts"
and bulletins, and use many new features created by third parties via the
Friendster Developer Program.


Friendster has implemented multi-language support on a single domain --
Friendster.com -- to promote communication and interaction among users who
speak different languages. 79 percent of active Friendster users have friends
in more than one country, and 23 percent of friend connections are between
users in different countries. These cross-border percentages, believed to be
the highest of all major social networks, require multi-language support to be
implemented in a single, global Web site. While other social networking sites
create separate sites for different countries or languages, Friendster was the
first global online social network to employ this single-site approach to
allow and encourage multi-cultural exchange and communications -- regardless
of language -- among users around the world.


"Friendster has a large number of bilingual users who would like the
choice to enter their content and use the site in either English or
Vietnamese, and countless users are looking forward to inviting their friends
and family who speak Vietnamese to join them on Friendster," said Jones.


Users can permanently or temporarily set their language of choice via
links at the top right of every page of the Friendster.com Web site or via the
"Settings" link.



Friendster Leads in Asia


Friendster is the No. 1 social network in Asia, with over 50 million
registered users and 34 million monthly unique visitors from Asia.(1) In Asia,
Friendster is more than twice the size of any other social network. While
Friendster has over 34 million monthly unique visitors in Asia, Facebook has
16 million, MySpace.com and MySpace.cn have only 15 million combined, Mixi
(Japan) has 14 million, CyWorld (Korea) has 13 million, Hi5 has 12 million,
Orkut has 10 million, Xiaonei (China) has 7 million, 51.com (China) has 7
million, and Bebo has 4 million.(1)



Friendster - A Top 10 Website Globally


Friendster is the 8th-largest Web site and the 3rd largest social network
in the world in terms of traffic, and #1 in user engagement -- time spent on
site -- among top social networks.  Friendster now has 68 million registered
users and 39 million monthly unique visitors. Friendster continued its healthy
growth by adding another 2 million monthly unique visitors in March and 9
million monthly unique visitors in the last 3 months.(1)



About Friendster


With more than 70 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. 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 and individual investors. For more
information, visit: http://www.friendster.com.



(1) comScore Media Metrix, March 2008



SOURCE  Friendster, Inc.