Friendster Launches Fan Profiles

Friendster Launches Fan Profiles

September 28, 2007

New Profiles Provide Self-promotion Features To Musicians,
Artists, Non-profits, Models and More

    SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 28 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ --
Friendster, Inc. (http://www.friendster.com) today
announced the launch of Fan Profiles, a new feature
enabling over 40 different entity types -- such as
musicians, artists, models, non-profits, athletes and more
-- to connect with existing fans and build a fan base
within Friendster's global community. Fan profiles come
with an extended set of promotional features including mass
email capabilities, contact list management, unlimited fan
base aggregation and more. Fan Profiles offer entities
immediate access to over 50 million registered Friendster
members, and give those seeking online exposure a new,
powerful tool.

    (Photo: 
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20070927/AQTH110-a
            
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20070927/AQTH110-b )

    Fan Profiles add a new dimension to Friendster's broad
and global social network, and the feature has the
potential to gain traction domestically and
internationally. Friendster currently receives nearly 30
million monthly unique visitors and serves over 250 million
pages daily to a user base in more than 75 countries.*
Additionally, Friendster is a top-100 Web site in 17
countries on four continents. 

    "Friendster is making a clear distinction between
'friends' and 'fans,' which allows Fan Profile owners to
build a genuine fan base," said Jeff Roberto,
marketing director at Friendster. "We're giving
entities access to a feature set that promotes them, even
when they're not online. After creating a Fan Profile, it
continuously promotes you or your organization to more
people via the fans already connected to you, and publicly
via major search engines."

    The Friendster Fan Profile engine consists of: 

    --  You (the artist or organization): By creating and
updating a fan 
        profile and inviting fans to join your network, you
set off a chain  
        reaction of notifications on and off Friendster.
Your fans receive 
        updates every time you edit your profile, update
your blog, upload 
        photos or embed content (like audio, video or
widgets).

    --  Fans: Every time a new fan joins your network, they
promote you to 
        their friends. Friends are notified both on their
homepages and by 
        email (if they subscribe to email updates).
Friendster maintains a 
        differentiation between fan networks and friend
networks, which gives 
        fan profiles a high level of visibility on the
network and makes it 
        easy for fans to promote them to friends.

    --  The Web: Fan profiles come optimized for Web
search, allowing them to 
        get picked up in major search engines like Google
and Yahoo! As more 
        fans join your network and more content gets posted
to your page, 
        your search ranking increases.


    Artists and organizations can request a Fan Profile by
going to http://www.friendster.com/fanprofiles.

    Independent artists and non-profit organizations
without large marketing budgets and resources can utilize
Fan Profiles to get the word out about themselves. Fan
Profiles contain a bulk invitation feature which enables
mass fan requesting via contact lists. Fan Profiles also
have a an auto-fan approval setting which saves the artist
or organization from manually approving every fan request,
so fan networks continue to grow with very little
maintenance. 

    "We're using a Friendster Fan Profile to take our
band to the next level," said Greg Federspiel, a
member of Making April
(http://www.friendster.com/makingapril). "We've been a
featured artist on MTV's 'Laguna Beach' and we've sold over
75,000 singles on iTunes; the next step for us is a solid
record deal. Our Fan Profile will help us get there,"
he said. 

    Popular existing Fan Profiles include:

    --  Hillary Clinton (politician): 
        http://profiles.friendster.com/hillary2008

    --  Dane Cook (comedian):  
        http://profiles.friendster.com/danecook 

    --  Polar bears (non-profit):
        http://profiles.friendster.com/onthinice

    --  Gnarls Barkley (artist):
        http://profiles.friendster.com/gnarlsbarkley

    --  Karen Kong (singer):  
        http://profiles.friendster.com/karenkong

    --  Fall Out Boy (band):
        http://profiles.friendster.com/fobonline

    --  Seventeen (magazine):
        http://profiles.friendster.com/seventeenmag


    Fan Profiles are currently supporting entities such
as:

    Actors, actresses, artists, artist management,
athletes, authors, bands, bars, bloggers,
churches/religious groups, comedians, comics, DJs, dancers,
directors, editors, education associations, events, fan
clubs, fashion, festivals, film/video, instructors,
journalists, models, musicians, non-profits, photographers,
political organizations, politicians, promoters, publishers,
publications, radio shows, record labels, restaurants,
singers, TV shows, teachers, teams, travel, venues, Web
sites and widgets.

    About Friendster

    With more than 50 million members worldwide, Friendster
is a leading global online social network. Friendster is
focused on helping people stay in touch with friends and
discover new people and things that are important to them.
Online adults, 18 and up, choose Friendster to connect with
friends, family, school, social groups, activities and
interests. Friendster prides itself in delivering a clean,
user-friendly and interactive environment where users can
easily connect with anyone around the world. Friendster has
a growing portfolio of patents granted to the company on
social networking, with more expected over the next several
months. Headquartered in San Francisco, California,
Friendster is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield &
Byers, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures and individual
investors. For more information, visit:
http://www.friendster.com.

    * comScore Media Metrix, August 2007


    For more information, please contact:

     Lerin O'Neill 
     The Hoffman Agency
     Phone: [phone]
     Email: [e-mail]