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Struggling to survive amidst the social networking giants such as Facebook and Myspace, Friendster for was a site left for dead on the net. The SNS service, established March of 2003, was a pioneer in the world of social networking; yet ever since it's peek in 2004, the site continues to battle diminishing membership. However, now armed with a new logo, fresh marketing, and revamped key demographics, friendster is repositioning itself to once again stake claim to a piece of the online SNS pie. Roughly 58 million users currently subscribe to friendster...yet you may find that hard to believe considering many of us have never heard of friendster before (even as a social networker myself, this week is the first time I've head of friendster). Perhaps friendster is just popular in other places. Here is a breakdown the site's worldwide traffic according to Alexa.com:

1. Philippines
2. Malaysia
3. United Arab Emirates
4. Indonesia
5. Singapore

The highest ranking English speaking country is Canada, ranked 10th, while the United States is ranked 16th. Asian countries clearly dig friendster...but why? Did certain communities just flock to friendster in the first place, or did the site target certain key demographics. It's a classic what came first, the chicken or the egg scenario: did Filipinos adopt friendster, or did friendster adopt Filipinos? (not in the Angelina Jolie sense) Here is a new ad for the new friendster that might shed some light on the subject:

Clearly friendster is targeting a particular audience in the video. As summarized in the article "Social Networking Sites:Definition, History, and Scholarship", authors danah boyd and Nicole Ellison argue that particular sites just gain popularity with certain groups. In particular, in the heyday of friendster,  the website "gained traction among three groups of early adopters who shaped the site, bloggers, attendees of the burning man art festival, and gay men" (boyd). Note: Asian populations are not a part of this group of "early adopters". According to the data, appears as if there was an Asian flight to friendster, to borrow from boyd's concept of the white flight from myspace users. But why? Is there some inherent characteristic in the SNS's interface that attracts a certain contingency? For the myspace/friendster case, does the ability to embed music, Jack Johnson videos and sparkly backgrounds to one's profile page make it inherently "skanky", especially compared to facebook's rigid formatting, lack of flexibility when it comes to personalization, and universal aesthetic (everyone's profile looks the same). "You can express yourself the way you want to!" claims the friendster video above...Does the user of facebook play by the rules and conform while the non conformist defies convention with personalization (for example, are there any emo kids on facebook? Goths?). However, one thing all these networking sites have in common is the egocentric model, as theorized by boyd. You are at the center of attention, and as the video preaches, friendster provides a place where "I want MY own space, MY own music, look...My own style...its you, upclose and personal!". And with friendster, "you" belong to an Asian communitiy more likely than not.

Back to the Filipino/Asian phenomenom. Perhaps it wasn't the chicken or the egg that distinctively came first. From her piece, "Taken Out of Context", donah boyd once again offers us insight into the demographical world of social networking sites. "As technology systems are socially constructed through usage, the socialtechnical practices that emerge shape the cultural landscape of both mediated and unmediated environments" (boyd 51). In other words, technological determinism and social determinism simultaneously coexist with each other when it comes to the world of social networking. Users shape SNS's, and SNS's shape users. Interestingly enough, these online communities are somewhat, and perhaps, will always be segregated to a certain extent. After all, people do join SNS's just to meet new people. Despite being egocentric, many networks pull people with similar backgrounds closer together. Is this necessarily a bad thing? I doubt a completely unsegregated online space will ever exist, even in real life unfortunately its hard to imagine, but only time will tell...