Friendster Supports Google Devfest and OpenSocial Developer Application Contest in South East Asia

#1 Social Network in Asia Participates in Four-Country OpenSocial Developer Tour

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA and MANILA, PHILIPPINES– November 6, 2008 – Friendster, Inc., a top-20 global website based on traffic and the #1 social network in Asia*, today announced that it’s supporting developers throughout South East Asia by its participation in the Google DevFest tour and OpenSocial developer application contest in Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Friendster’s support of DevFest and OpenSocial will help recruit more regional and local developers in Asia. Developers will learn how to build applications for over 85 million registered Friendster users globally and 62 million in Asia, the largest group of internet users on a single social network in Asia. Friendster applications built on OpenSocial APIs can also be deployed on other OpenSocial-enabled websites reaching hundreds of millions of Internet users worldwide.

Friendster recently launched support for OpenSocial as part of the Friendster Developer Program so individual developers and companies can easily use OpenSocial APIs to deploy their applications, or “apps,” on Friendster. OpenSocial applications on Friendster enrich the user experience by providing hundreds of new and interesting features for Friendster members to use and share. New features are added on a weekly basis.

These hundreds of new features created by third-party developers include music, games, 3-D avatars, virtual worlds and experiences, group chat, videos, photos, sports, TV shows, entertainment, and news and information. For the Friendster user, applications provide another way to connect with friends by using and recommending new applications. Developers interested in building applications for Friendster using OpenSocial and/or other APIs available via the Friendster Developer Program should visit: www.friendster.com/developer
“The first three events at Singapore Management University, Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University, and Ho Chi Minh City’s University of Technology exceeded our expectations and were completely filled to capacity”, said Jeff Roberto, marketing and PR director at Friendster. “We’re looking forward to the final event this week in the Philippines as hundreds of South East Asia developers are showing up for each DevFest event, and their interest in developing OpenSocial applications for Friendster is at an all-time high. This is great news for Friendster, Friendster users and the other sites supporting the OpenSocial initiative, with many new and exciting applications launching shortly,” he said.

OpenSocial Developer Application Contest
To support the developer community and encourage innovation on the OpenSocial platform, Friendster and other OpenSocial partners from the DevFest tour are organizing an OpenSocial Application Contest for local developers to use their coding skills and creativity to build OpenSocial applications.
Prizes will be awarded to developers in Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam whose applications are picked by a panel of judges, which includes representatives from Friendster. For each country, the top winner will receive a Nintendo Wii and three additional winners will get an Apple iPod Touch. In addition, the winners will have their OpenSocial applications promoted by Friendster and other OpenSocial partners from the DevFest tour to drive widespread user adoption on Friendster and other OpenSocial-enabled websites to hundreds of millions of Internet users worldwide.

Developers can register and submit their OpenSocial applications from November 15, 2008 to January 10, 2009. Entries are limited to three per person and will be evaluated on: creativity and user appeal; internationalization; use of other APIs; and use of App Engine for hosting files. Winners will be notified by January 26, 2009 and the contest results will be announced by February 6, 2009.
To register and to view additional information about the OpenSocial Application Contest, developers can go to: http://code.google.com/events/apacdevfest/contest

Friendster Leads in Asia and is a Top 20 Global Website
Friendster is the #1 social network in Asia, with over 62 million registered users and over 45 million monthly unique visitors 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 38% of the world’s Internet users while the U.S. has only 22%), 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 and the 3rd largest social network in the world in terms of traffic, serving 19 billion page views a month. Friendster is 1st in “user engagement” among the top five global social networks with users spending an average of 185 minutes per visitor per month on www.friendster.com.*