Guess this will teach people to say “its dead jim” long before it really is dead. Friendster is back from the Web 2.0 graveyard and posts a 40% boost in traffic according to Comscore via Venture Beat.
The site had 24.7 million unique users last month, according to the latest Comscore data for global traffic just released. It lags behind leaders such as MySpace and Facebook (see chart below), but it is holding its own among the large pack of second-tier social networks of size, including Bebo and Piczo, as it grows in places like Malaysia and the Philippines. Source: Venture Beat
Overall it makes it interesting that they are also pursuing an open door policy for widgets and other technology as well. This bodes well for the future of open applications, like SilverLight, Ajax, and the new moonlight (SilverLight on Linux).
This also should make everyone stop for a moment and think about their business model, twitter, Facebook, friendster and others have all gone with an open API syndrome. Google and others have also done this, even Microsoft have done this to a point. Think about that, open API’s open platforms, build your own stuff on data, and suddenly you have an audience.
Close the door, and watch people not be very interested in your web site. Or in what you are doing or what you are delivering.
If I am going to have a business plan, it will feature a lot of open API’s, it seems the way to get the audience that clicks on the ads and life is good. Otherwise, most Venture Capitalists might be thinking twice about closed systems that do not allow the geekier participants.
Otherwise, what is also interesting about Facebook is adoption in countries other than the USA, and other than English speaking people. To have a generalized web, where everyone can participate, this is a good thing. Nevertheless, a hard thing to advertise to, there is just not a high level of disposable income, but the ads will get clicked on.
Check out Google and Orkut, most of their users are not Americans or even English speaking. That is hard to advertise on, hard to do a number of things that web 2.0 web sites rely on to make money.
Depending on which way it breaks out for Friendster, this could be a good thing, or a bad thing, but advertisers are going to want to know where the traffic comes from. This might not lead to more folks advertising on the site, but at least it is good for metrics and the number of people who visit the web site.
