DigitalLife 2007: Friendster Announces Fan Profiles

Taking a page from MySpace, Friendster announced that it was launching Fan Profiles, a feature that allows artists and celebrities to connect with their fans through a variety of methods.

Some 40 different entity types will be supported, including actors, athletes, bands, DJs, events, journalists, musicians, politicians, TV shows, web sites, among others.

Fan Profiles will be provided at no cost to the creator, the company said. Users could also set their profile to auto-accept new friends, allowing the entity's network to grow automatically.

Friendster says that the service allows the artist or personality to contact the fan even if they are not on the site. Mass e-mail capabilities, contact list management, and fan base aggregation are some of the services to be provided.

The site's is the second-largest social networking platform on the Web, and counts about 50 million members in 75 countries. The site says through the methods it will use to promote the artist, those using the service will be able to quickly gain visibility on the net.

One of the bands the company is working with is Making April, which just signed up for a profile on the site two weeks ago. Band members were on hand and said they noticed a direct correlation between the rising numbers of "fans" and sales of their music on iTunes.

For example, when a profile is updated, all fans are automatically alerted. Additionally, when a fan adds the artist to their friends list, the friends of than fan are alerted in a variety of ways, including e-mail updates if they are subscribed to them. Finally, the pages are optimized for search, meaning they will be accessible via search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Some are already taking advantage of the Fan Profile platform, including Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and musical artists Gnarls Barkley.

Those interested in creating fan profiles can visit the Friendster Web site.