Friendster to introduce text alerts in Asia, RP

MANILA, Philippines - Social networking site Friendster announced it will soon roll out a text alert service in four Southeast Asian nations, including the Philippines, a feature it first tested in the country. In a statement, Friendster, arguably the most popular social networking among Filipinos, said that users will soon be able to subscribe to Friendster Text Alerts, a suite of alerts covering activity in their Friendster network which can be sent directly to their mobile devices via text messages. The Internet company said the new offering will be launched in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines in the coming weeks. It will announce features to its users when it becomes available in each country. The Friendster Text Alerts is an enhanced offering based upon a pilot program previously introduced in the Philippines, it said. According to the statement issued from Singapore, Friendster Text Alerts is the company’s second mobile offering after its mobile site, m.friendster.com, which was unveiled in May 2008. When launched, the company said Friendster users can subscribe to receive text message alerts for friend requests, new messages, comments, bulletins, among others. When such activities takes place within their network of friends on Friendster, they will receive a text message on their mobile phone, it added. Users will also be able to share and communicate on Friendster by sending a text message to Friendster to update content on their profile, such as shout-outs and bulletins, send messages, and reply to friend requests, the company said. The new mobile service will increase the communication among users and encourage network activity while Friendster users are away from a computer. David Jones, vice president of global marketing for Friendster, said in the same statement that the text alerts will enable the company’s 52 million users in Asia to stay connected even on the go. “Recent studies have shown that about 90 percent of Asia’s mobile phone subscribers use SMS text messaging, and some of the highest per subscriber usage of text messaging is in countries in Southeast Asia. It’s only natural to combine the most popular mobile feature—text messaging—with the most popular social network in Asia," said Jones. Friendster users must opt-in, or register, to use Friendster Text Alerts by entering their mobile phone details and selecting which mobile text alerts they wish to receive. Friendster does not charge its users for Friendster Text Alerts, but users are subject to text messaging usage fees of their wireless service provider. Friendster said it is the seventh largest website in the world and the top social network in Asia. The company said it is more than twice the size of any other social network in the region. “Friendster has over 36 million monthly unique visitors in Asia, Facebook has 18 million, MySpace.com and MySpace.cn have only 16 million combined, Mixi (Japan) has 14 million, CyWorld (Korea) has 13 million, Hi5 has 12 million, Orkut has 12 million, Xiaonei (China) has 7 million, 51.com (China) has 6 million, and Bebo has 4 million," it said. Friendster also said its third largest social network in the world in terms of traffic, and tops in user engagement (time spent on site) among social networks. - GMANews.TV