And we thought Friendster was dead…

MOL Global Pte. Ltd. (“MOL Global”), a leading online payment solutions provider , announced they have acquired Friendster.com , the social networking website. Yes, we are talking about  the same old social networking site we registered long time back and almost forgot about it. Its the same site which has a record of hitting 3M users in first few months of its launch in early 2003. With MOL Global’s annual revenues of more than US$1.8 billion , the merger  could create ,
“Asia’s largest end-to-end content, distribution and commerce network, pairing MOL’s offline retail channel partners and payment platform with Friendster’s large online footprint, social network and user community in Asia”.

Friendster and MOL first began working together in October, when MOL was enlisted to develop an integrated payments platform that would lay the foundation for The Friendster Wallet and The Friendster Gift Shop.

MOL has a network of more than 500,000 physical and virtual payment channels across 75 countries worldwide, through maintaining a focus in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and India. The company also has relationships with more than 70 online game publishers that have have 200 online game titles.  Though Facebook outnumbers Friendster, but this MOL funded site surely has its grip in major parts of Asia. Out of the 75 million  registered users, 90 per cent of users are from this region.

Recently Friendster launched like a new brand and a web site packed with new features representing a significant milestone in the company’s history while focusing on the Asian youth market. The notable changes include a new fun-centric brand, and a redesigned web site with a focus on local relevance, fun and simplicity.

It would be far easy for MOL to promote and get users to join Friendster, looking at the present MOL audience which focuses majorly on gamers (youth audience) who buy various other subscriptions with their easy payment model all over  South Asia.

MOL said Friendster is expected to contribute $110m in annual revenues.