i.justrealized

Friendster next target for an acquisition, sources close to Reuters reveal. I would think this is the end of the Friendster.

Friendster to be sold by month’s end -source

SHANGHAI, Dec 4 (Reuters) – Friendster, one of the world’s earliest social networking sites, will be sold to an Asian buyer by the end of December for at least $100 million, a source familiar with the matter said.

Friendster, which predates Facebook and MySpace in the social networking space was founded in 2002. But it quickly lost ground to other social networking sites in the United States. Friendster is now mostly used in Asia where more than half of its registered 100 million users are from.

Friendster will be sold to an Asian listed firm for more than $100 million in a deal set to be announced by the end of the month, said a source who declined to be identified as the information was not yet public.

Headquartered in California, Friendster had turned down a $30 million buyout offer from Google Inc (GOOG.O) six years ago, according to newspaper reports.

Tencent Holdings (0700.HK), China’s largest Internet firm by market value at $35 billion, was among the short-listed bidders, while Facebook also showed interest but was turned down due to competition and intellectual property issues, the source said. (Source: Reuters)

Thanks for pioneering the idea of how social network should be but you will not be missed.

BlogOut! is okay, nice food. I think the discussions has been great. Thanks for organizing. Thanks Claudia for letting me be there.

• Listening to yongfook at #blogout09 #
• Now it’s Claudia’s turn at #blogout09 #
• @echoz Well, once every 3 months kinda thing, haha… in reply to echoz #
• #blogout09 Hi right from behind #
• #blogout09 It’s so easy to hijack a hashtag somehow. #

You can follow my Twitter hashtags here.

Went to BlogOut! today! I couldn’t stand nouns having appended with an exclamation mark as I always felt confused when I try to make a proper sentence. Anyway, BlogOut! (not again…) is pretty good today. The whole theme is basically social media: good, no social media: bad. Well something along the lines.

One of the more interesting things being brought up in the discussion is the MDA (Media Development Authority) rap which most considered ridiculous. As much as I dislike (and would often cringe) the video, I actually watched it around 10 times. I shared the link with all my friends and give them something to laugh about. Almost everyone I showed thought it is the most embarrassing thing that come out from Singapore.

The video spread so quickly within days. It wasn’t even supposed to be on YouTube, it seems to be more of an education video for visitors of the MDA website to educate them of what the MDA is about.

It’s accidental success (or major failure as view by some) did achieve something quite unplanned. And that is now a lot more people know of MDA’s existence. Before the video, I doubt as much people heard of MDA much less know what they do. With one video, MDA got into Techcrunch and Digg. I could probably even get you a bunch of local blogs which discuss it.

It may be a horrible video to watch but it spreads and if you were to measure success by the increased awareness of MDA and their purpose, I think the video scores. What’s worse than bad publicity is no publicity.

Well, let us appreciate the MDA rap once again:

Do you plurk?

If don’t, can tweet.

[EDIT: That Plurk widget tries to ruin my layout! Fixed.]

A simple story that illustrates the forces shaping social media. CommonCraft tells you what it is.

Social Media in Plain English

I like CommonCraft’s presentation method. You can’t say it’s another tech video. It’s well done. (via Unique Frequency)

“Social”, today, is one of the most overuses Web 2.0 words. The investors must have totally dig this word or something. The bigger blogs mention that all the time: social bookmarking, social news, social media and social networking. In Singapore there’s social escort too, alright that’s slightly different.