Friendster boosts Asia teams as focus shifts from US

According to Stewart, the company is in the process of moving into a larger office in Manila to accommodate its 65 employees in the market. It also has 15 staff members in Singapore, where Stewart is based; 10 in Sydney, where the company’s CEO Richard Kimber holds an office; and 20 in Mountain View, California, Friendster’s official headquarters.

“Ninety per cent of our users are in Asia so this is really where we need to be and this is where the heart of the company is,” Stewart said, adding that Friendster has 45 million active users in Southeast Asia. “The way it’s mapped out, the brain of the company is in Singapore, our work is in Manila and our technical centre of excellence, with the servers and technological base, is in San Francisco.”

Friendster has engaged in several types of partnerships in Southeast Asia to solidify and develop its Asian image. Among them are the content providers, such as MTV, the company Stewart was previously employed by, to offer relevant and localised material to users. It has also been in talks with gaming developers, not only to broaden its appeal to users, but to move away from our dependency on advertising,” Stewart said, pointing to the success story seen by companies such as Tencent. “It’s really only Google that has been making money from advertising, and that system is very different.”

But Friendster’s real focus will come in the form of mobile, for which the company has inked deals with telcos such as Smart Communications in the Philippines and Nexus in Malaysia to implement technology for users without a strong broadband connection necessary to access the site fully. “Fifteen per cent of our users don’t even access Friendster online, it’s all on their phones,” Stewart said.

“We’re really focusing on three key areas,” he added. “We’re cleaning up the site so it’s technically strong and secure, pushing the mobile aspect so it may someday be more of a mobile social network than online and, finally, pushing the music and entertainment so Friendster can be a true fan destination with more tools that allow users fill their pages with pictures and clips from movies, actors and musicians just as they would posters in their own bedrooms - it should be their personal site.”