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Sunday, December 6, 2009

"I Mean, If Everyone's There, Whoop-Dee-Doo."

Posted by on Sun, Dec 6, 2009 at 1:18 PM

Friendster apparently relaunched on Friday. Dig their edgy promotional video:

Everything was so simple back in 2002.

 

Comments (15) RSS

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Confluence 1
That is the lamest ad I've ever seen. Um, and no one is going to use it, by the way. All the things it advertises are already done on facebook.
Posted by Confluence on December 6, 2009 at 2:00 PM
2
The ad is obviously geared towards kids, who I suspect Friendster sees as an easier target. The Asians in the ad aren't an accident either; they still have some sort of audience in Southeast Asia.
Posted by It's true on December 6, 2009 at 2:42 PM
Steven Bradford 3
It's not an accident because it's not some sort of audience it is their audience. They're still big in the philipines, so it sounds like they're focusing on their strengths rather than beating their head against the facebook wall.
Posted by Steven Bradford http://www.seanet.com/~bradford/ on December 6, 2009 at 3:23 PM
4
Did they spend about 50 bucks producing that ad? Was it an entry in a create-an-ad contest for the remaining users of friendster (hopefully not the winning ad)? The graphics, script and sound editing are so cut rate it's laughable.
Posted by genevieve on December 6, 2009 at 3:30 PM
Urgutha Forka 5
I think I had a fake account on Friendster like, 6 years ago? And they kicked me off for being fake. Never looked at them again.

I figured they'd just gone out of business and sold their domain or something.
Posted by Urgutha Forka on December 6, 2009 at 3:48 PM
spoiler alert 6
so, it's like facebook, but without all the annoying *other* people?
Posted by spoiler alert on December 6, 2009 at 6:36 PM
Jigae 7
They're new logo is eye-bleedingly bad.
Posted by Jigae on December 6, 2009 at 6:40 PM
8
Friendster is only for Filipinos?
Posted by Echoes Myron on December 6, 2009 at 6:40 PM
doesurmindglow 9
@7:

I second that. Plus, if the biggest knock on Facebook is it's lack of ability to personalize, wouldn't MySpace be the most obvious solution?
Posted by doesurmindglow on December 6, 2009 at 9:57 PM
doesurmindglow 10
its*

FACK.
Posted by doesurmindglow on December 6, 2009 at 9:58 PM
piojin 11
barf.
Posted by piojin on December 6, 2009 at 10:37 PM
12
Gross.
Posted by katallred on December 6, 2009 at 11:04 PM
Lord Basil 13
this will just promote lacivious sex.
Posted by Lord Basil http://lordbasil.blogspot.com/ on December 7, 2009 at 1:31 AM
Telsa Grills 14
In '02, it was brilliant. It wasn't Facebook. It was largely the "digerati" and online-savvy folk, many from the pre-dot-bomb era. Even running into New Order sleeve artist Peter Saville was possible in such a way that bouncing Friendster mail back and forth was no big thing.

And if you left, they didn't "own" your personal information in perpetuity by using pretzel legalese. It wasn't ubiquitous nor was it the lowest common denominator sum for social networking, but it was the game-changer. It was, in the strictly social networking sense, one of the first to have the traction to prove that sth like the stuff we have now could actually work. They just lacked monetization.

But then again, the Friendster board of directors ousted the founder and that sealed its demise too soon. Then some Harvard kids were putting another site together when good ol' Mark Z. nastily ganked their concept. The rest is scrawled on a wall somewhere.

I dunno wtf this new "Friendster" is, but it is a branding fail. I won't be going back. And I never joined teh Facebook. Or teh Twitter.

Both deserve marred articles.
Posted by Telsa Grills on December 7, 2009 at 2:16 AM
15
I continue to use "freindster" as to describe people I am in contact with only via Facebook. Saying "Facebook Friend" or "online acquaintance" just takes to long. Plus "You wouldn't say that about me if you knew about all my Black Freindsters" was a really brilliant bit from The Onion.
Posted by dwight moody on December 7, 2009 at 2:58 PM

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