Friendster Expands Its Team, Offcies and Partners in Asia

Key Hires, New Offices and Partners To Enhance Company's Asia Pacific Focus

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Jan. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Friendster, Inc., a top 20 global website based on traffic and the #1 social network in Asia, today announced that it has further expanded its team, offices and partnerships in the Asia Pacific region and that it will continue growing its team and partners in Asia throughout 2009.

Friendster has opened up new offices in Singapore and Sydney, Australia. The Sydney office is where Richard Kimber, Friendster's CEO, is based along with new members of Friendster's marketing, sales and business development teams. The new Singapore office will also host sales, marketing and business development teams. Additionally, Friendster has a new U.S. global headquarters in Mountain View, CA which houses members of the executive staff along with employees in all departments. Friendster will continue to maintain and expand its office in Makati City, Metro Manila, Philippines. In operation since 2006, the Philippine office primarily houses engineering and operations, but it will expand to accommodate more direct sales and marketing staff in 2009. Since 2008, a majority of Friendster's employees are now located in the Asia Pacific region, and at least 80% of Friendster's new hires in 2009 will be based in Asia.

Narciso Reyes, Friendster's first-ever Philippines country sales manager, will head Friendster's sales efforts in the Philippines and will be based out of Friendster's local office in Makati City, Metro Manila. Reyes will focus on building new advertising campaigns and relationships with local advertisers and their agencies and recruiting a local sales team. Prior to joining Friendster, Reyes held senior sales roles at Google, Doubleclick and LycosAsia. He has more than 10 years' experience building successful online campaigns for leading brands globally.

In addition to Reyes and a growing direct sales team throughout Southeast Asia, Friendster has also expanded its reseller partnerships to a total of four agencies in the region that will help with local advertising sales efforts. All four resellers will complement Friendster's growing direct sales team.

Pixel Media, a leading advertising sales network in Asia, has been appointed the exclusive sales partner for Friendster in Singapore, where Friendster has 1 million monthly unique visitors.* Additionally, Pixel Media has been and will continue to be the exclusive sales partner for Friendster in Malaysia where Friendster has over 3.6 million monthly unique visitors.* Pixel Media will work closely with advertisers and agencies to deploy effective interactive marketing campaigns on Friendster in both countries.

In Indonesia, Admax, a leading website representation and digital advertising network of premier local and international sites in Southeast Asia, has been named the exclusive reseller for Friendster. Admax will work with local advertisers in Indonesia to launch their campaigns on Friendster, giving them access to Friendster's over 5 million monthly unique visitors in Indonesia,** a top-3 website and the #1 mobile site in the country.***

In the Philippines, Friendster has two reseller partners -- Havoc Digital and Yehey!. Friendster recently added Yehey!, a top Philippine portal and search engine, as a reseller. Havoc Digital has been a reseller partner of Friendster since August 2005. Friendster will work with both Havoc Digital and Yehey! to build award-winning, successful campaigns for advertisers in the Philippines where Friendster has over 13 million unique visitors** -- virtually the entire online population of the Philippines -- and where Friendster is a top-3 website and the #1 mobile site in the country.***

"The expansion of our team, offices and sales partnerships in Asia not only sets 2009 up to be an exciting year, but helps us pursue the necessary monetization opportunities available to Friendster in our core Asian markets," said Richard Kimber, CEO of Friendster. "As we move deeper into 2009, we will continue to build upon our direct sales, product, engineering, operations, marketing and finance teams to execute on our strategy and unwavering focus on Asia Pacific."

Leading the recruiting efforts for all offices worldwide is Xpand Group, a leading digital media recruitment services company in Asia. Xpand's clients include many of the world's leading corporations, financial institutions, technology vendors, digital media companies and systems integrators/consultancies. To view all open positions that Friendster and Xpand are recruiting for, please visit http://www.friendster.com/jobs/index.php.

Friendster Leads in Asia and is a Top 20 Global Website

Friendster is the #1 social network in Asia, with over 75 million registered users from Asia.** In Asia, Friendster has more monthly unique visitors than any other social network. Plus, Asia is the largest market of Internet users (Asia has 41% of the world's Internet users while the U.S. has only 19%), and Asia is the fastest growing region in the world.* Friendster has a loyal and growing user base throughout Asia in the following top 10 countries for Friendster: Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and South Korea.

Friendster is a top 20 global website in the world in terms of traffic, serving over 19 billion page views a month.* Friendster is also the leader in "user engagement" among the top five global social networks, with users spending an average of 190 minutes per visitor per month on http://www.friendster.com.*

About Friendster

With more than 95 million members worldwide, Friendster is a leading global online social network. Friendster is focused on helping people stay in touch with friends and discover new people and things that are important to them. Online adults, 18 and up, choose Friendster to connect with friends, family, school, social groups, activities and interests. Friendster prides itself in delivering an easy-to-use, friendly and interactive environment where users can easily connect with anyone around the world via http://www.friendster.com or m.friendster.com from any Internetready mobile device. Friendster has a growing portfolio of patents granted to the company on social networking, with more expected over the next several months. Headquartered in Mountain View, California, Friendster is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, IDG Ventures and individual investors. For more information, visit: http://www.friendster.com.

*comScore Media Metrix, Worldwide and Singapore and Malaysia Country Data,
October 2008
**Google Analytics and Friendster Internal Data, November 2008
***Opera Mobile Report, October 2008


SOURCE Friendster, Inc.