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philippines

Why Friendster Lost the Philippines to Facebook

By thomascrampton ⋅ October 19, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Why have so many in the Philippines switched from Friendster to Facebook? Dominique Anne offers a great list that came out of her talk with Paolo Pangan of Yehey!

Her list (slightly edited):

Quality, not Quantity - In Friendster times, our main goal was to get as may friends as possible. We wanted was to show the world that we already have a second, third, fourth, fifth (and so on) accounts because previous accounts reached the limit for the number of friends. In Facebook, we treasure each contact and really know all the people in our list. We learned from Friendster that it’s quality over quantity.

Tagging - Facebook tells us that we do not have to repost every picture of ourselves that our friends have. Just by tagging, we all have a copy of the pictures we want.

Newsfeed self-control - In Friendster, flooding the bulletin board is acceptable. But don’t we just hate flooding? In Facebook, flooding the newsfeed is like humiliating yourself. You are not disciplines!

Quiz interface - Friendster surveys and quizzes require you to open all of the others’ posts and pages to know if they have the same answers/results. Facebook surveys and quizzes allow you to click and get results in seconds. You can easily see the headshots of friends with the same results as mine.

Status update history - Facebook allows you to constantly update status and keep track of previous status updates. In Friendster, where shall we put it? In shout outs? Shout out, once erased, is gone forever.

Share images and video easily - You can easily share and make our friends know that we have posted a new picture, video, comment, or even link through real-time updates seen at the lower right portion of Facebook.

Live chat - Facebook lets you see your friends who are online and chat with them. Friendster does not.

Less Spam - Friendster inboxes are flooded by spam messages and invites to try applications. Facebook inboxes receive messages that are really meant personally for us.

There are even more in the comments of Dominique Anne’s post.

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philippines

Discussion

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Comments for “Why Friendster Lost the Philippines to Facebook”

  • scottpearson
    Twenty five servers in the US have been shut down due to sudden decrease of network traffic. Email Support headquarters in India was dissolved leaving a bunch of people jobless. Hosting was recently downgraded to save unused bandwidth. Advertising rates, almost a "give-away". Hate the fact that a country that is as small as the Philippenes can make this huge impact to a well established company like Friendster.
  • Not Quite, buddy.
    Um. No. Also, there isn't any friendster email support in India. Nice try, though.
  • buragta
    whew this is so true i rarely visit my Friendster account now. Facebook is all I want.
  • dochotshot007
    Hi Thomas, thanks for visiting my blog. I like the fact that your post has more details and pertinent information about Friendster's decline. I honestly feel there may still be hope for them if they change their model and interface.
  • Yes, I would not count Friendster as dead. What may happen is that different demographics are kept as strongholds by Friendster. That seems to be happening in Malaysia.
  • dochotshot007
    Friendster does need to come up with something really innovative if they want to entice their users to switch back to them. Maintaining specific strongholds may show that they're not out of the game yet but it doesn't show that they are winning either. I really do feel bad for Friendster with the hope that they can get themselves together and make a smashing comeback.
  • dominiqueanne
    Hello! thanks for referring to my post. I like the way you edited it--it's now more concise.

    The case of Facebook winning over Friendster is evident here in Manila, capital of the Philippines. However, Friendster still dominates many of the provinces here in our country. Maybe it will take some time before people residing in provinces will learn about Facebook and enjoy social networking sites even more.

    I am sure that most of young professionals here in Manila now prefer Facebook over Friendster. It seems that Friendster is now revamping its site and I am still unsure if the attempt will be successful in gaining its users back.
  • buragta
    im in cebu its not just Manila that's hooked to Facebook c'mon
  • dominiqueanne
    hello, buragta! I still have friends and relatives in provinces who claim that Friendster is still in use by most in their places. Well, i just thought it's safe for me to conclude that this is the case for Manila since I personally know it as a dweller here. But thanks for the added info about Cebu =).
  • buragta
    well cebu is a metropolitan too but for the far-flung provinces like my hometown in Samar yea I believe most of them still use Friendster a lot more than FB...i bet though that the trend will favor FB in the coming days...take note that Phils in general has one of the highest % increase in FB registration lately... as for me..i rarely access my fster account now since i tried FB...i realized its a lot better and has a lot more to offer to users (and Fster is doing something about it)...and most of my friends are now switching to FB..
  • Dominique Anne: Your comments were really relevant, all I did was sharpen them up!
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Thomas Crampton was a correspondent for the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times for more than a decade, reporting from five continents, writing a column on Asia and covering Asian politics, economics and culture. Currently based in Hong Kong, he writes here about China, the Internet and New Media seen from Asia, while also advising companies on digital communication strategies. For more information click here...