So Friendster (so 2003, no?) has received a $10 million lifeline from investors, allowing them to try to re-establish themselves on the social networking scene. This is going to be pretty hard, as there’s younger and cooler competition on the scene these days. They need to go from the wallflower they are today, back to being froody and, more to the point, relevant to peoples’ lives.
Their master plan, it seems, is to abandon its roots and go older - targeting the 20 and 30 somethings. This smacks of desperation somewhat - in social networking terms, focusing on the ugly people, coz the attractive ones won’t shag you.
What they should be doing, as I’ve been suggesting for over 2 years now, is integrating mobile into their core proposition. Why is The Valley (with some admitted exceptions) so desktop-centric, still? Wake up, it’s 2006!
I had thought that Friendster had got this priciple back in November 2004, when they announced their mobile experiment in The Philippines - even though I agued that there were flaws in the strategy and execution. But mobile seemed to be on their radar and that would surely lead to further developments.
Fast forward to today and The Philippines experiment is still the only thing mobile about Friendster - and wishfully still labeled “new”. At the same time, there’s still no really great social networking site that successfully combines the best of web and mobile, with any kind of scale (correct me if I’m wrong) and the opportunity is still wide open. And even in the US, teens are clearly embarking on the obsessionist love affair with their mobiles that we’ve had in Europe for so much longer.
So, if Friendster wants a make over and to seek relevance to its target market, don’t go old, go mobile. Or the next announcement in six months might be a desperate new strategy of trying to appeal to Octogenarians - after all, there’s not much competition there!
[tags] friendster, mobile, social networking [/tags]
I agree with you to some extent - mobile is the next big battleground for the major social networking services. Certainly in the UK things are really hotting up with myspace putting out a tender for its European mobile platform, Bebo really using the UGC capabilities of mobile for user uploads etc and second tier players like faceparty building client apps.
The problem for the likes of Friendster is that in the most important market (US) they are effectively prevented from offering services over mobile due to the operator walled gardens. Carriage agreements with operators (as with the myspace and Helio deal) are the only way to get a mobile portal out there.
Or maybe i’m over-stating this - i know the US operators are opening up but not sure how far this has gone.
[...] I’ve just been reading an interesting comment piece on MobHappy by Russell Buckley, suggesting that if social-networking site Friendster (MySpace kids, ask your dad) wants to recapture its former cool, it should go big on mobile. [...]
[...] « What Should Friendster Do Now? [...]
You’re in tune with the analysts. I interviewed Gartner media analyst Allen Weiner yesterday about Friendster, and what they should do, and he said to really target their post-college, urban professional audience, Friendster is going to have to offer mobility and some other services for its more tech-savvy audience.
Catherine - I like to think that the analysts are in tune with me
Russell
Five lessons from Friendster - how not to do it…
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