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

“Our users have asked for a mobile site that makes staying in touch with friends while on the go even easier. We’ve taken our most popular core social networking features and made them easy to use via mobile devices at m.friendster.com.”
-David Jones, VP of Global Marketing at Friendster

Friendster has officially launched a mobile version of their web site.  This a much-needed addition in order to keep up with the Joneses.  The Joneses include Facebook Mobile, Google Mobile, and MySpace Mobile.

Through the mobile version of Friendster, users can check out check messages, review friend requests, post shoutouts to friends, browse through photos, browse user profiles, search for users, add posts bulletins.

Friendster is the biggest social network with 50 million users and about 34 million uniques per month in Asia alone.  Friendster has 70 million members worldwide.  How many of them are active?  Who knows?  I lost interest after about a year.

Below is a gallery of the mobile version of the site:

As Friendster has recently started promoting third party applications, the company sent out an e-mail recommending music applications and 3-D avatars for their users. The music applications are powered by Qloud’s myMusic and imeem. The 3-D avatars are powered by Meez.

For Meez’s 3-D avatars, users can set the clothes, body style, and hair. After that, the avatars can be animated and embedded into any profile page. The music applications immediately ask the users which songs they would like to embed. The music applications has some preselected songs that the user can have embedded on the site or gives the option to play music that is connected to one’s music collection iTunes or Windows Media Player using a plug-in. Nifty.

I think the way that Friendster is opening up applications is much more organized than Facebook. Friendster seems to be more knit-picky about the types of applications that are added. The Facebook approach was more of a shoot first, ask questions later approach. I guess between social networks, each one seems to be learning from each other in some way. Back when Facebook first started, they were knit-picky about where the users actually came from. The exclusivity of Facebook’s initial user-base was their core competency and gave them enough time to prepare for scaling a large user-base.

Friendster Inc. announced today that they have launched a directory that has over 180 applications for use of their 56 million global users.  These widgets compete head-on with Facebook’s Applications.  Google has an exclusive search partnership with Friendster.  These applications are a part of Friendster’s Developer Program: http://www.friendster.com/developer.

The widget directory is available at: http://www.friendster.com/widgetdirectory

The Friendster Developer Program was created for developers to monetize their applications with no revenue-sharing required.  The Friendster Developer Program has APIs that are compatible with OpenSocial.

The Friendster Developer Program was created for developers to monetize their applications with no revenue-sharing required.  The Friendster Developer Program has APIs that are compatible with OpenSocial.  The 6 companies that have piloted the program since October 25th includes Rockyou, Slide, Clearspring, Jangl, GBox, and Imeem.

Friendster is based in San Francisco, Calif., has been backed with nearly $26 million, and started in 2002.

“God, history just keep repeating itself, doesn’t it? The parallels with the history of search are eerie. Someone leads (Friendster/Alta Vista), then falters, others launch, and catch up, a market leader emerges (Yahoo/MySpace), then a new entrant sprints ahead (Google/Facebook), then the “old” leaders have to partner to respond.”
-John Battelle, Founder of Federated Media, co-founder of Wired Magazine, and author of The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture

Battelle wrote on his blog earlier this afternoon that Chris DeWolfe (co-creator of MySpace), Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google), and Joe Kraus (co-founder of Excite.com and JotSpot) that MySpace will be adopting Google’s OpenSocial standard APIs.   Facebook on the other hand still has not shown any sign of joining Google OpenSocial.  Facebook provides their developers two types of APIs, FBML Test Console and API Test Console. 

Brandee Barker, Facebook’s Director of Corporate Communications claims that Google did not give a formal briefing to the social network company about OpenSocial
“Despite reports, Facebook has still not been briefed on OpenSocial. When we have had a chance to understand the technology, then Facebook will evaluate participation relative to the benefits to its 50 million users and 100,000 platform developers [Source: TechCrunch].”  However, Google and Facebook are currently talking according to a couple sources.

Will Facebook join the OpenSocial bandwagon?  Stay tuned.

Below is the official press release:

——

MYSPACE AND GOOGLE JOIN FORCES TO LAUNCH OPEN PLATFORM FOR SOCIAL APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

Collaboration on “OpenSocial” to Spark and Simplify Web Innovation

LOS ANGELES / MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA—November 1, 2007—MySpace, the world’s largest social network, and Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced that they are joining forces to launch OpenSocial— a set of common APIs for building social applications across the web. The partnership spearheads an initiative to standardize and simplify the development of social applications. Today’s announcement underscores MySpace’s commitment to supporting standards that foster innovation in an increasingly social Web.

“Our partnership with Google allows developers to gain massive distribution without unnecessary specialized development for every platform,” said Chris DeWolfe, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of MySpace. “This is about helping the start-up spend more time building a great product rather than rebuilding it for every social network. We’re pleased to collaborate with Google to establish a landmark standard for social applications.”

As a founding member of OpenSocial, MySpace will provide critical user mass and platform guidance. The OpenSocial standards are designed to evolve through contribution from the open source community and as new features are developed by various partners. Global members of the OpenSocial community include Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.

“As the most trafficked website in the country and the most popular social network in the world, MySpace is one of the leading forces in the global social Web,” said Dr. Eric Schmidt, Chairman of the Executive Committee and Chief Executive Officer of Google. “We’re thrilled to grow our strategic relationship with MySpace by joining forces on this important initiative.”

“An as application developer, we’re excited to see MySpace adopting the OpenSocial standard for social application development,” said Joe Greenstein, CEO of Flixster. “Application developers have been working with MySpace for a long time—this takes what we can do together to a whole new level. The sheer scale of MySpace makes this extremely exciting for us.”

“We’re all citizens of a larger Web—no network is an island onto itself,” said Aber Whitcomb, CTO of MySpace. “We look forward to continuing to develop great technology with Google and all of the OpenSocial participants. It’s exciting that social networks are getting social with each other.”

The launch of OpenSocial is the first release of technical details for the forthcoming MySpace Platform. Starting tonight, developers can start writing applications for OpenSocial at http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial which the MySpace Platform will support at launch.

If the rumor about what the Google executives previously dubbed NBC and News Corp.’s idea for Hulu is true, I see them as being completely hypocritical. Around March 2007, rumors were afloat that News Corp. and NBC were parterning to develop a YouTube competitor and Google executives were supposedly not worried about it because they were reportedly nicknaming the company that didn’t exist at the time as ClownCo. Today that company is named Hulu and they have impressed the hell out of several media bloggers including Pulse 2.0, TechCrunch, and GigaOM. Mashable seemed to have a more undecided opinion about how Hulu will perform in the market.

The reason why Google would give such a nickname to the company is because of the number of players involved. Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo!, MySpace, FOX, NBC, and News Corp. were all involved somehow as partners of the company in some shape or form. But the reason why I am calling Google hypocritical is that they seem to be pulling the same trick: partnering with a large number of companies to try and one-up a company that they cannot stand to see score a good deal for themselves. Microsoft’s investment in Facebook is what I’m referring to specifically.

I am making a bold statement by calling Google execs a hypocrite, but I have to admit that I was partially influenced by the article title on today’s New York Times: Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook. And when hearing Google and Friends Ganging Up on Facebook, I think of a $220 billion search monopoly picking on a 23 year old with a good idea. Shame on you: Schmidt, Brin, and Page. You guys should just take some money out of the bank and take a bath in it or buy more Boeings.

Who is Google allying with? Other social networks of course. These social networks include:
1.) LinkedIn
2.) hi5
3.) Friendster
4.) Plaxo
5.) Ning

Other companies involved in Google OpenSocial include Oracle and Salesforce.com. Just for the record, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch also mentioned that the only image associated with OpenSocial is a horny Elmer’s glue thing. As funny as that comment was, I agree that there is something highly wrong with this image.

All opinions aside, do I expect OpenSocial to really take off? I think developers will explore the prospects of OpenSocial, but won’t be as receptive to developing applications for Google’s partners. This is because Facebook’s core users are college students and young, urban professionals that are still receptive to adding applications that make networking more “fun.” And the social networks that Google has partnered with are losing their edge. As a recently graduated college student myself, I have personally left Friendster years ago and never looked back.

I think Google is an amazing service and will not sway from using their search engine unless something amazing comes along, but I think OpenSocial seems too much like a product created out of a grudge. And that doesn’t go along with their “Don’t be Evil” philosophy. When Facebook Applications were released, they were promoted as a way for developers to explore the creative senses while leveraging Facebook’s user base.

In a move that now replaces Yahoo! as an exclusive provider, Google Inc. has now inked a deal with social network, Friendster.com.  The financial details are not disclosed, but it may be safe to assume that it is less than the $900 million for 3.75 years that Google paid MySpace for in a similar deal.  Google ads and search will appear in profiles as well.

Friendster was the dominant social network player back in 2002 before MySpace took off and before Facebook was introduced.  However, Friendster still boasts 19.4 million active (37 million registered total) users as of January.

The length of the contract was not disclosed.  Jonathan Abrams is the founder of Friendster and had previously rejected a $30 million buyout offer from Google.  Ironic, ain’t it? Friendster investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, DAG Ventures, and Benchmark Capital.

Remember Friendster?  Bambi Francisco spoke with Friendster CEO, Kent Lindstrom and found out that Google is going to place ads and power Friendster’s search technology.  Friendster was founded in 2002 by Jonathan Abrams.  Google had made a similar deal with MySpace last year.

Yahoo! was the previous search technology partner with Friendster.  Now Google will benefit from Friendster’s 1 million monthly unique visitors.  Google’s contract with Friendster is supposed to last 2 years and the financial details were not disclosed.  Google paid News Corp, owner of Myspace, $900 million.

[Source: Bambi's Blog]

Slide.com, the photo slideshow website has raised a third round of funding from Khosla Ventures and Mayfield Fund. According to VentureBeat, the amount of funding for the third round is undisclosed, but there are rumors circulating that it is over the second round of $8 million. Based on third round funding estimations, Slide is currently worth near or over $20 million.

Creating a slideshow with Slide is done in 3 simple steps from the arrange page. The three steps are: 1.) Create a Slide Show, 2.) Save Slide Show, and 3.) Share Slide Show. There are 4 presets to scroll pictures: Sliding, Stars, Collage, and Checker. Photos can be directly imported from your PC hard drive, Photobucket account, Flickr account, MySpace account, or direct URLs. There are also several themes and sizes to alter these slide shows.

One of the co-founders of Slide is Max Levchin, a co-founder and former CTO of PayPal. Levchin is from Kiev, Ukraine, then moved to Chicago to attend UIUC. After PayPal went public in 2002 and his 2.3% stake was converted into $34 million after the eBay acquired PayPal, Levchin started Slide in 2004.

Levchin had also created Yelp, a review-centric social network. Previous investors include Founders Fund, BlueRun Ventures, and Peter Theil, the other co-founder of PayPal. Levchin aims to make money by adding sponsored pictures in slide show image crawls. Currently, Slide and Yelp are based in San Francisco. SFGate.com has a detailed history of Levchin’s past.