Friendster Launches Fan Profiles
San Francisco (ots/PRNewswire)
- New Profiles Provide Self-promotion Features To Musicians, Artists, Non-profits, Models and More
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.(i) 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/seventeenmagFan 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.
(i) comScore Media Metrix, August 2007
Web site: http://www.friendster.com
Contact:
Lerin O'Neill of The Hoffman Agency, +1-408-975-3037,
loneill@hoffman.com, for Friendster, Inc. ; Photo: NewsCom:
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20070927/AQTH110-a,
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20070927/AQTH110-b, AP Archive:
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PRN Photo Desk, photodesk@prnewswire.com