Friendster Hires Richard Kimber Replaces As CEO & Raises $20 Million In Funding
Amit Chowdhry | Tuesday August 5, 2008 | 1,495 views| Add a Comment
Friendster Inc. is in the midst of a heavy transition. Today the social network company announced that they have raised $20 million in funding, led by IDG Ventures. Friendster also announced today that they have hired Richard Kimber.
With this new round of funding, Friendster has raised $45 million to date. The $20 million in funding was Friendster’s Series D. Previous investors include Battery Ventures, Benchmark Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and DAG Ventures.
Kimber ran the South Asian operations and partnerships for Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG). Kimber is one of many executives that have been plucked from Google by social networks. Facebook hired Josef Desimone and Sheryl Sandberg from Google within the past year.
Ironically, Google made an exclusive search and ad deal with Friendster around March 2007. Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) was Friendster’s previous search partner.
Kent Lindstrom, Friendster’s former CEO will become Senior VP of Corporate Development of Friendster. Lindstrom worked as a senior executive for Friendster since 2006.
As Friendster continues to increase in popularity around Asia, the social network has opened offices in the Philippines and Singapore. Friendster is the number 1 social network in Asia, except for China. QQ is the current leader in China.
Friendster is available in languages such as Indonesian and Vietnames. Friendster currently has 75 million registered users.
What Friendster should do with this new round of funding is hire a plethora of young developers to rehaul the current look and feel of the site. The profile pages still look very congested.
Related Links:
1. Friendster
2. NYT
3. CNET
4. WSJ
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