The new Australian chief executive of Friendster has outlined plans to generate revenue for the struggling social networking site through advertising and by introducing a form of digital currency for users to trade.
ZDNet.com.au confirmed this week that Google's managing director for its South-East Asia operations Richard Kimber had ditched the search giant after two years in favour of the Friendster role.
Kimber replaced incumbent CEO Kent Lindstrom, who had led Friendster for roughly the same time Kimber held his Sydney-based post at Google.
The social networking site, which claims to have 75 million members worldwide, mostly in Asia, has secured US$20 million from venture capital fund, IDG Ventures — a figure US$10 million short of what Google was willing to pay for the entire company in 2006, according to a report in the New York Times.
Kimber told ZDNet.com.au this week his first goal was to plough the US$20 million into building the company's revenue base, which he hopes will come from Friendster's members in Asia.
"We'll continue the development of the platform by adding new services and new monetisation strategies. I'll be doubling down on the advertising side but will also be introducing new forms of revenue through such things as virtual goods and gaming options," he said.
The so-called virtual goods will focus on allowing members to buy "skins" for each others' mobile phones and tradable credits, similar to virtual gold traded by World of Warcraft gamers, which have been used in internet and email scams to lure victims.
Kimber was unconcerned by reports that rival site Facebook has recently experienced a decline in the number of new members and fewer interactions with friends on the site.
Former Facebook application developer, Jesse Farmer, has claimed that posts per day on Facebook's developer forum have halved since January — 461 in January 2008 down to 222 in April 2008 — with sign-ups and active users (one post per month) dropping by one-third, and highly active users (over five posts per month) having dropped by 47 per cent.
"It's still early days for social networking. Some press are declaring victory too early, but today only 20 per cent of internet users are using social networks. It's not as ubiquitous as email but I can foresee the day where everyone has a social networking account," Kimber said.
"I think we have a long way to go. If you look at the growth on the internet, it's going to be in Asia. And if I was a growing company that's where I would focus my efforts."
