FRIENDSTER NOW AVAILABLE IN TAGALOG
Over 90 Million Tagalog Speaking Filipinos Globally Can Now Use Friendster
To Keep in Touch with Friends and Family
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – January 27, 2009 – Friendster, Inc., a top 20 global website based on traffic* and the #1 social network in Asia, today announced that Friendster.com is available in Tagalog, the most popular language in the Philippines that is used by over 90 million people worldwide. Friendster’s mobile site m.friendster.com will also launch in Tagalog in the coming days. This new language addition on Friendster gives the 14 million Internet users in the Philippines and users around the world a greater choice of languages with which to navigate the site, share content and use Friendster’s complete set of social networking features.
Friendster.com now fully supports 11 languages – English, Bahasa Indonesian, Chinese (both Simplified and Traditional), Japanese, Korean, Malay, Spanish, Tagalog, Thai and Vietnamese. These languages represent over 70 percent of the world’s Internet users, or approximately a billion Internet users in total. Friendster’s mobile site m.friendster.com supports 7 languages – English, Bahasa Indonesian, Chinese (both Simplified and Traditional), Malay, Korean and Tagalog.
“Over 90 percent of all Internet users in the Philippines are currently using Friendster, which is an order of magnitude larger than any other social network in the country. Launching support for Tagalog on the Friendster web and mobile sites will help us maintain our leadership position in the Philippines and within Filipino communities around the world,” said David Jones, vice president of global marketing at Friendster.
79 million people in the Philippines – 85 percent of the total population of 93 million – are not yet using the Internet.
“Friendster in Tagalog gives even more Filipinos a reason to get started online and join their friends and family on Friendster. And, for those Filipinos who don’t have regular access to a computer, they can join and enjoy Friendster via their mobile phone by visiting the m.friendster.com mobile site. We look forward to welcoming millions of Tagalog speakers to the Internet and to Friendster,” said Jones.
Users can set their language of choice on Friendster several ways through links at the top right of every page of the Friendster.com website, the “Settings” link at the website or mobile site, or the Languages link at the bottom of the homepage of the mobile site at m.friendster.com.
Friendster also announced today the ability for advertisers to target ads on Friendster based on the language preference of the Friendster user. With this new enhancement, advertisers can choose to target ads on Friendster via geographic location, age, gender and/or language preference. In the Philippines, for example, this will be particularly useful for advertisers to target ads in the Tagalog language to users who have chosen to use Friendster in Tagalog and ads in English to users who prefer to use Friendster in English.
Tagalog is spoken by more than 64 million Filipinos, or about 70 percent of the total population in the Philippines. Tagalog is spoken throughout the world outside of the Philippines and is most popular within Filipino ethnic groups. There are approximately 90 million Tagalog speakers globally, and it is the fifth most spoken language in the United States.**
Friendster Leads in the Philippines
In the Philippines, Friendster is the #1 social network, the #2 website and the #1 mobile site.*** Friendster is an order of magnitude larger than competitors in the Philippines. Friendster had over 13 million monthly unique visitors from the Philippines in November 2008,**** which is 93 percent, or virtually all of the 14 million Internet users in the country. A typical user spends 30 minutes a day on Friendster and visits Friendster several times a week, communicating with friends and sharing and consuming content through a suite of features, which also creates a great platform for local advertisers.
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, and has more monthly unique visitors in Asia than any other social network. Plus, Asia is the largest market of Internet users (Asia has 41 percent of the world’s Internet users, more than double the 19 percent from the U.S.), 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: 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 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 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: www.friendster.com.
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Media Contact:
Lerin O'Neill
The Hoffman Agency for Friendster
+1.408.832.7083 (m)
+1.408.975.3037 (o)
press@friendster.com
** Results from the 2000 Census of Population and Housing: Educational Characteristics of the Filipinos, National Statistics Office
*** Opera State of the Mobile Web Report, December 2008
**** Google Analytics and Friendster Internal Data, November 2008
http://www.friendster.com/info/presscenter.php?A=pr57
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