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Friendster Philippines Office closed down?

The office of Friendster Philippines, formerly known as Pusit.com, has been closed down. William Yu took some pictures of their office and asked Where Did Pusit.com Go?

Pusit.com

Migs adds that Friendster has ceased running Friendster Classifieds and Friendster Ads (FAds) – They’re outsourcing their technical stuff to another company here, though, AFAIK (something called EGG which listed Friendster as one of their partners). Is this the same one I got from another source a couple months ago about that BPO?

It’s possible Friendster Ads and Friendster Classifieds weren’t successful in monetizing the service among the 5 Million Filipino Friendster users.

Even the domain pusit.com now resolves to Friendster.com.

Update: One of the developers of Friendster Philippines has confirmed this. The contract was apparently not renewed by Terence Pua, Friendster Philippines Country Manager. The old team is now working on new projects like Eskwela.com and Xackup.com (under the company PiKitchen) which seems to compete with Friendster.

There’s no official word from Terence Pua though. William Yu has more juicy information from several unverified sources here. Looks like Friendster will be doing a local BPO after all.

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Avatar for Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

28 Responses

  1. Avatar for news phoenix traffic news phoenix traffic says:

    Aw, this was a really good post. Taking the time and actual effort to make
    a really good article… but what can I say… I hesitate a lot and never manage to get nearly anything done.

  2. Avatar for Camz Ü Camz Ü says:

    please tell us naman how can we get our old pix…. i hope na you’ll give us a chance….i know what we ask is too much but please understand we LOVE OUR OLD FRIENDSTER!!!! AT SINO BANG MAY GUSTO NG BAGONG FRIENDSTER!!!! BRING BACK OUR OLD FRIENDSTER,,,PICTURE,,,COMMENTS,,,,ETC…!!!!!! :

  3. Avatar for carlo carlo says:

    hi i need help on how to retrieve my old pictures i cant open friendster anymore please help!

  4. Avatar for fulai fulai says:

    Based on my research, they dont have plans to return old pics sa friendster.. Friendster didnt realize or didnt care on how important those pictures for us… kaya magandang gawin ay…. BOYCOT them!!! mas maganda pa ring maglaro ng games sa Facebook!!! at nakapagshare ka pa ng kahit ano unlike Friendster (crap!)

  5. Avatar for elanie elanie says:

    hindi n b maibabalik p ang mga old pics sa friendster…

  6. Avatar for lesterp0gi lesterp0gi says:

    Laos na ang Friendster dahil sa Facebook !! Mas maganda kc Facebook !! Baduy ang friendster !! pang Jejemon !! Yuck kadiri !! Facebook rules !! Rest In Peace Friendster. We will not miss you :-P Facebook is now the King of Social Networks !!

  7. Avatar for tiles bathroom tiles bathroom says:

    I have viewed other articles and comments which are broadly in agreement with Friendster Philippines Office closed down? but I have to admit that this item has some supplemental info. There is no smoke without fire and in that respect there are no remarks without posts.

  8. Avatar for Amyntas Alex Amyntas Alex says:

    Hey there, If you would like to improve you webpage position on google check us out http://bit.ly/9Kv16l We have a Private VPS Server with over $2000 worth of software on it for Search engine optimization use. That you get to use at a flat fee of $200 for the year. We are also the BEST SEO community on the net. So check us out!

  9. Avatar for Eric Rudolf S.A. Barongan Sr. Eric Rudolf S.A. Barongan Sr. says:

    May be Friendster Philippine Office was really had closed down, that is why it is no longer found now a days.

  10. Avatar for merika oribello merika oribello says:

    I would like to be a member of thise yugatech……………

  11. Avatar for aj aj says:

    @miguel:

    here’s your answer…
    http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2006/nov/12/yehey/career/20061112car1.html

  12. Avatar for demonique demonique says:

    What’s with your content.. shouldn’t you be blogging on Google’s new acquisition or books.googler.com or something.. heck with friendster and all those filipino code monkey.. FYI.. they’r too incompetent to finish the jobs..

    your fool of crap!

  13. Avatar for JC John SESE Cuneta JC John SESE Cuneta says:

    jayvee..

    [quote]
    i read somewhere (was it from duncan riley?) that social network monetization is very bad. CPM is something like 0.001 cents.
    [/quote]

    You just don’t know how bad ;)
    Our company lost millions (my former employer that is) :p

  14. Avatar for Miguel Miguel says:

    Either the Pusit group, or Friendster, should come out with an official statement so they could end this speculation.

  15. Avatar for Rickey Rickey says:

    Being first, doesn’t account for much apparently in this situation.

    The reason why Friendster failed is because their servers got so slow and unusable, all the early adopters from the U.S. left, and never came back or gave a damn. The article I linked to sums it up pretty nicely.

    I guess you stick to where your friends are that’s why so many Filipinos are still using Friendster.

    With 75% of its user base outside the U.S., this American company is now forced to service cultures it is completely alien to. I don’t know about you guys but isn’t it obvious that its a money-loser? If 75% of Friendster’s users are outside the U.S. then all the ads they have there (netflix, t-mobile) are useless! (Question: If you are in the Philippines, does Friendster sill serve you Netflix and T-Mobile ads? Or are they Philippine advertisers?)

    Becoming a major Philippine website was obviously not the goal of Friendster when it started.

  16. Avatar for elmer elmer says:

    pusit.com, what an interesting name, i thought they’re into seafoods business?? my bad.

  17. Avatar for Miguel Miguel says:

    AJ: I was speculating that it was gone because classifieds.friendster.com was down. This was last Friday when I saw the closed sign.

    keekai: that was much of the topic of last nights’ Google Philippines presentation.

    in any case, about Friendster… the reason why we started speculating is for the lack of official word from the companies involved.

  18. Avatar for keekai keekai says:

    Friendster PH CPM may look cheap but getting high SOV is a killer to advertisers… we (pinoys) are afterall a friendster crowd and geo-targeting ads to PH users is basically geo-targeting a large chunk of the community.

  19. Avatar for AJ AJ says:

    This part is completely incorrect – “Migs adds that Friendster has ceased running Friendster Classifieds”

    Friendster Classifieds is still up and running and can be found at http://classifieds.friendster.com

  20. Avatar for Mike Abundo Mike Abundo says:

    Friendster focused too much on a geographic market niche. Today’s most profitable market niches are not geographic, but psychographic.

  21. Avatar for Dexter Zafra Dexter Zafra says:

    I read an article a while back about why friendsater is far behind Myspace. The author said is due to users geographical location. 50% of Friendster’s users are based in Asia were Myspace is US based users. How this affect Friendster in terms of revenue and finding Venture Capital? Well the author stated that more US based Companies will likely backup and advertise with Myspace.

  22. Avatar for SELaplana SELaplana says:

    nalugi na po yata kaya nagclose.

    siya nga po pala…. down po ba ang server po ng ploghost.com? Pati po kasi yung site ko down din simula pa po yata kanina umaga.

  23. Avatar for issai issai says:

    but didn’t they patent themselves as the first networking service of its kind?? so bale, its not all failure… they’re barely breathing but ok pa naman siguro…

    they lost to other networking sites…. and they can’t earn money just by ads with traffic from 3rd world countries…

  24. Avatar for ade ade says:

    Argh. That’s bad. Very bad.

  25. Avatar for Rickey Rickey says:

    The story of Friendster’s failure:

    http://www.kottke.org/remainder/06/10/12011.html

    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/business/yourmoney/15friend.html?ei=5090&en=3e9438ed349f7ce7&ex=1318564800&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

  26. Avatar for jayvee f. jayvee f. says:

    i read somewhere (was it from duncan riley?) that social network monetization is very bad. CPM is something like 0.001 cents.

  27. Avatar for Jolo Jolo says:

    Yes Abe. Pusit.com is now officially under friendster. We’re moving into a new venture now. ;)

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