Netster 宅男

I sup­pose Malaysian was very happy yes­ter­day when the news breaks out that MOL buy­ing Friend­ster? How do you feel?

I am not say­ing I don’t like the idea, I just have the feel­ing – “if I am the CEO I will not approved the acqui­si­tion of Friend­ster” it sim­ply too expensive.

MOL busi­ness has excess annual rev­enue of USD1.8 bil­lions a year thinks that Friend­ster is a good buy for USD100millions! Who actu­ally con­vince Tan Sri Vin­cent Tan for this?

Don’t get me wrong, every busi­ness has their own fair share of per­sonal finan­cial inter­est that make the deci­sion and that’s bring a big ques­tions in my head. Why would Friend­ster is so impor­tant to MOL? Or be prof­itable to MOL?

Face­book has reached 350millions active users recently and I thought to myself, wow! I think it’s time Friend­ster to look for buyer and sell their social net­work­ing off before Face­book ripped them apart! True enough that some­one is buy­ing and that none the less a com­pany from Malaysia!

WOW, How did I miss that one? I have never thought that would be com­ing! It does mak­ing Malaysia look good… for…errr… not sure for how long.

Google today worth 153.4 bil­lions as of Octo­ber 2009, offered a buy­out for Friend­ster in 2003 for ONLY 30 mil­lions! After the failed buy­out, I have not heard Google attempt to buy.

I am try­ing to proof the point here, it has been 7 years and Friend­ster has only 115 mil­lions users (check out their blog, it says 85 mil­lions) while Face­book is at 350 mil­lions. Guess what? Face­book launch their ser­vice 2 years later after Friend­ster hold­ing the fame!

Friend­ster stay the same, the same design ever since! No direc­tion and no sense of pur­pose. SPAM of porno links and graphic, hacks and each day more and more chil­dren uses Friend­ster (and bom­barded with porno SPAM) and for a while every one of them leave Friend­ster for Facebook.

Tell me, why do I have the feel­ing that Friend­ster new design is a way to tell Malaysian, Thank you for buying?

Check out Friend­ster offi­cial blog, our PM tweet that link.

You guy knows that Friend­ster has his own blog platform,right? SURPRISE! Their offi­cial site uses Word­Press. How many com­ments? NONE! “Not that there’s any­thing wrong with that.” Except Friend­ster users is not actively engag­ing with the com­pany! This spell BAD business!

I hate Face­book, and I hate Face­book! How­ever Face­book is not los­ing users, Friend­ster is! How will Friend­ster a prof­itable company?

Sell Friend­ster coins to 115 mil­lions kids, will that help? Or play online game, MMORPG?

If I were a MMORPG user, why would I join Friend­ster just to play games?

I notice Friendster’s devel­oper are not actively using the site APIs as much as Face­book! I haven’t seen any plu­g­ins or any­thing that can be use in blogs and web­sites. I haven’t seen my Friend­ster account flooded with mes­sages invit­ing to play the games develop by 3rd party for Friendster!

Unless MOL has and ready to pay for the in-house think-tank and devel­oper to revamp the site use­ful­ness and the right direc­tion, Friend­ster is going down real quick before you notice it.

What hap­pen to ICQ?