The New Friendster Ad, Causing Head-Scratching Since Last Week

Posted on December 7th, 2009. Written by Rico.

Sorry Friendster. I know you’re trying to differentiate yourself from the Facebook juggernaut, to reclaim your lost social networking glory. But your ad promoting the site’s revamp shows you’re playing catch-up.

See the ad for yourself:

You’re claiming to be something that’s “simple, personal, and fun”. But Facebook already has those covered, which is why that site is on the ban list of corporate admins worldwide.

What about those screenshots? From the stream of contact updates, it looks like you’re trying to copy Facebook, something that wasn’t lost on those who commented on your ad. Boasting about games like The Farmer and a gift-giving function—already available on Facebook—doesn’t really help your case.

And did we really have to wait this long for you to finally improve your media-sharing capabilities? People have posted entire albums (the visual and audio kind) on Multiply for years now. And they do too on (you guessed it) Facebook.

To be fair, I haven’t tried out the revamped friendster.com. Still, you should consider pulling the ad, as it doesn’t do a good job of winning converts. Based on my first impression, I really don’t feel like visiting the new site now. I’ll try it out eventually, if only to satisfy my curiousity—when I have the time.