Houston Community News >> Chinese Version of Friendster Coming Soon
9/25/2007-- Friendster has just
announced a traditional Chinese version of its social network. This is obviously
a move for global expansion, to a part of the world that is high in population
and has a large amount of Internet users in a target demographic.
And Friendster’s global expansion won’t provide separate and localized versions
of its social network, but will instead use the same domain for both English and
Chinese speakers, enabling them to network with each other. This is quite unlike
the tactics adopted by MySpace and the rest. Although, I can see where
Friendster is going with this, encouraging multi-cultural conversations and a
true global network. But there’s a lot to be said about providing a localized
version of your site–mainly that you are catering to your new audience and are
at least trying to make them more comfortable with using your service.
Yet, as Friendster is already seeing significant growth in the Asia-Pacific
region according to comScore, even beating out MySpace for its rate of growth in
the area, the users on the other side of the world may continue to like the U.S.
version of the Friendster just fine. The social network’s latest update revealed
a new way to separate your “business” profile from your real friends network, if
popularity is your business.
Contributed by Mashables