URL: http://www.friendster.com Company Name: Friendster, Inc. Contact Name: Jonathan Abrams Address: 415 N. Mary Ave., Suite 112-280 Sunnyvale, CA 94085 Country: US Phone: (650) 618-2638 Email: info@friendster.com
What is friendster? It is a hybrid of an online messenger plus a forum, blog and gallery. This is a free service that allows you to get connected with your friends. You get to keep a list of existing friends and see your friends' list too. Your friends are arranged in diferent levels where your closest friends are known as 1st Degree Friends followed by 2nd Degree and 3rd Degree.
Site Design & Layout The site design is very plain. It is practically different shades of gray and blue. The layout is also average and not that user friendly. I forgive them because it is just a new site. I believe they will sort this out when they have the budget or when they get bigger.
Banner Ad Supported Site? Spyware? YES. Just one sometimes huge or standard 468x60 banner on the top right hand corner. No Pop-ups so far. There will be no spyware because it does not require you to install
or run any applications.
How much to join? It is free to join. All you need is to register by filling up a short online form. You will then need to confirm your e-mail using a code sent to you.
What you get? You will get a personal account where you can update your details, upload your pictures, send and receive personal messages, add friends, view friends, write testimonials, posts on the bulletin board and invite friends. I will go through all this features in detail later.
Their Privacy Policy They would not send spam or distribute your e-mail to a third party. You will only receive notifications up to your choice about your account updates.
FEATURES:
Your Personal Profile There is a personal profile that you can update which is viewable by all your friends. Details include schools that you have studied at, your location, country of origin, favourite movies, favourite music, who you want to meet and more. You do need to complete your personal profile but it is advisable to do so.
Your Picture/Gallery You can upload 5 either in gif, jpg or png and not exceeding in 500KB in file size pictures of yourself which can be viewed by others. You will get to assign one picture as your primary photo which is viewable on the first page of your profile and on your friends page. They restrict you from using other people or obscene pictures and you can report it if you see one but I have seen tons of them in friendster.
Testimonials You can write testimonials about your friends that can be read by others on his or her page when they approve it. This is both fun and addictive. I have been writing tons of testimonial about my friends and have received lots of them. It is nice to see what your friends write about you.
The Bulletin Board This is practically a board that is exclusively for you and your 1st degree friends. Here you can post up almost anything that is representable in text and worth posting. You can also view all your friends posts here.
Personal Message This is like an e-mail account where you get an inbox to store all your messages. A sent mail folder to see what you have sent and a trash for all those deleted messages. You will get to send messages to your friends. This is only viewable by your friend and no one else. The person can then reply to the message you send.
Invite Friends You can send out invitations to your friends to join friendster if they do not already have an account. This is done using the online form where you can send multiple invitations at once. There is a limit of 100 invitations a day.
E-mail Notifications Friendster is automated to send you e-mail updates whenever somebody has approved you to be their friend or when you have received a personal message.
Meeting New Friends You can meet new friends by just looking through the network of friends that you have. You can search for them by browsing through your current friends' friends' list or by an image, name or details search. You can also look for people with the same interests.
Safety Factor The safe factor about this is that all the people that you mix with are within the network of friends that you have established. This is so much safer than meeting new people through online chats, messengers or forums. However do keep in mind that people change or might act differently. Do not arrange visit or meet up with the people that you are not too familiar with. It is best to meet up in a big group of friends accompanied by someone you can trust than meeting individuals.
Others Features There is an online shop selling stuff like t-shirts and other goods. You can buy them if you like them and have extra $$$ or £££ to spend. There is also a listing of events sponsored or organized by friendster.
Errors They only allow people to upload 5 pictures. However, there are some people with 7 pictures or more. There is a simply trick in doing this by uploading images back to back. The server responses very slow and sometimes you will manage to get more pictures up than usual.
Advantages - Free To Join - Great Time Killer - Get and Keep In Touch With Your Friends
Disadvantages - Addictive - Slow Server - Script Error
Well, that's all I have to say for the moment. Before I leave, if you have a friendster account, add me as your friend. My friendster account is bennyong@lycos.com
I hope this helps.
Take care! Benny Ong
Pictures of Friendster
Website Index Page
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
I have an account on there, but haven't been on in ages. The only thing I didn't like was that if you started talking to someone, and the "link" between you broke, you couldn't talk to them anymore.
purplelynne 18.08.2004 23:19
Must check it out. Lynne x
jesi 06.04.2004 01:54
very interesting - but be careful of your personal information. ~~(:-)-{::::::::::|<
Mar 31st, 2004
very helpful by (100%):
