Friendster picks up key Google exec in a gamble for Asia Pacific

By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published August 5, 2008, 12:38 PM

In an apparent refocus of the social network provider on the Asia Pacific region, today Friendster announced it had secured the services of a fellow who helped bolster Google's presence there in recent years as its new CEO.

It's the type of boast you would expect to hear in the voice of the late, great Don Adams: Would you believe that Friendster is, and has been for some time, the leading social network online in the Asia/Pacific region?

Richard Kimber had been Google's managing director of operations for the Asia Pacific region, including key countries such as India, Malaysia, Vietnam, Australia, and New Zealand. He takes over an operation that North American and European Web users have largely written off as yesterday's news, but that may still be responsible for as much as 31% of time spent online with the top five social networks in that region, and which may have as much as double the users of its nearest rival there, Facebook.

At about this time last year, media analysis firm comScore broke down social networking traffic on a regional basis, and then hour-by-hour. It concluded that some 89.9 million hours of usage were attributable to Friendster in the Asia Pacific region, compared to just 20.8 million for MySpace.

An updated report may be forthcoming this month, but in the meantime, the data for Friendster looks pretty good. Last April, comScore projected Friendster with 36 million users in the region versus MySpace's 18 million. And at the end of June, comScore proclaimed Friendster still the leader there, as the overall size of the Asia Pacific social network user base grew by 14% over last year, to 318.6 million users by the end of April.

The countries that lead the growth in that region are India, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, and New Zealand -- a profile with which Kimber, a former HSBC banker in the region, may find himself quite comfortable. That tie-in with the financial world may have helped Friendster today to receive a booster shot of $20 million, through an investment group that includes tech publisher IDG.

Friendster's current chief, Kent Lindstrom, will remain with the company, though his role with the company has officially been pared down to President. Lindstrom was instrumental in helping his company in 2006 to obtain a patent for certain methods of arranging social networks online, though its IP threats against rivals worldwide have thus far been largely unheeded.

Google -- the company Kimber leaves -- remains responsible for about four in ten online searches in the Asia Pacific region. However, a surprising 1.2% of all online searches in that region, according to comScore, take place on Friendster.