Friendster is a social networking site that took off in 2002, but never really cemented its web status the way facebook is now. After earning a venture capital of almost $50 million, it is bought in 2009 by MOL Global, a Malaysian payments company for a reported sum of $40 million.

Years worth of photos, blogposts, testimonials, messages, comments, groups, and even profile information dumped into the site could be saved until May 31. That seems a handful, for this sudden evacuation. But yes, Friendster will not leave their users scrambling for storage for 9 years worth of files. How is that possible? Well, there is this “Friendster exporter” app that the site has provided. It is a custom application that the user needs to install to be able to export all their Friendster data to Flick or Multiply. Though most files in the site will be deleted, the account will still be active, and friends lists, game details, and basic information will remain.

What happens next for Friendster? It will be reformatted to a social networking site centered on games and entertainment. This reinvention hopes to be a new phase for Friendster, as a complement for the bunch of social networking sites that one’s online presence belongs to.

According to the blog excerpt of FS.

FRIENDSTER LAUNCHES GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP WITH MOL ACCESSPORTAL BERHAD (MOL) TO POWER MICROPAYMENTS AND THE FRIENDSTER WALLET.

“Through this strategic partnership, we’re enabling many users to pay for goods and services online, for the first time, and in doing so, creating a valuable transactional ecosystem on Friendster,” said Ganesh Kumar Bangah, president and chief executive officer at MOL. “We’re excited to extend our payments platform exponentially via this relationship, as both companies will benefit from the continuous loading and spending within the Friendster Wallet.”

As part of the partnership, MOL will provide a variety of payment capabilities for Friendster users, including the virtual wallet, transaction management, pre-paid physical cards, support for multiple payment methods, and fraud management. Some of the payment methods MOL supports are operated by MOL directly, and some are provided via integration with third-party providers, like PayPal. The MOL platform is used today on a variety of large scale web sites and supports payments for transactions surrounding goods, services, gifts, online games, premium content, and e-commerce for applications and 3rd party integrations.

If you have been using friendster, you’ll notice that the developers are starting to inject games inside the mix, a good example will be ‘The Farm’. The said ‘waning’ social-networking site is also leaning to social-networking payment system, their implementation of the Friendster Wallet just proves it – It’s a feature that will enable stored credit for each Friendster user in a currency called “Friendster Coins.” It can be spent throughout Friendster’s site for goods and services. The wallet will also include a non-monetary, marketing currency called “Friendster Chips”.

Sounds like the Mol GLobal Company fusion with Friendster, was not so bad at all? Yes, we could say that. The only caveat here is, unlike in US and other european countries, Asians tends to be not so familiar with e-transaction; Would it be so wise if their strategy should include western countries? To at least expand their territories to another notch. Now that friendster finally have a ‘gift-horse’ on their back, trying to venture outside the box wouldn’t hurt, would it?

Ah, seeing how this one plays out should be interesting yet still not promising.

That’s just some of the trite expression you will hear from social-networkers today who weren’t familiar with Friendster. Going back to the history, you could say that on 2003, Friendster was like the Facebook of today – Predominating the whole social-networking dimension, there’s a lot to expect with Friendster before and its disappointing how its fame dissipates throughout the years.

Yesterday, Friendster is sending some signal that they are going in for some major changes, just look at their new ‘green-leafy’ logo (doesn’t it look like a vegetable?) We thought that’s the end of the news, little did we know there’s a rumor buzzing today that their CEO, Richard Kimber, is planning to sell Friendster to an ‘Asian Buyer’ (A name not yet disclosed by Reuters) Kimber told Reuters that Morgan Stanley has been hired to handle the ‘deal’.

Friendster is still popular in Asia, but contrary with the many tech-blogs are saying that it’s still strong on the Philippines, the truth is, Filipinos are starting to get bored with Friendster too, and they are starting to shift the fever on facebook. Though its only an opinion and that statement can’t be supported by Alexa. However, if you live in the Philippines, one can see that Friendster here is not’ ‘that’ popular anymore, even in the suburbs, netizens are starting to become Facebook-savant netizens.

Big-Mistake:

If  you will look at the history of friendster, In 2003, Friendster management received a $30 million buyout offer from Google, which they declined. Google at that time wasn’t BIG G as we know today and Facebook is still little baby. One could say that ‘if only’ Friendster accepted the deal, I’m confident to say that Friendster will surely grow to the Nth level. Today, the current value of Facebook is 10 Billion dollars on the contrary Friendster had a valuation last July for a suffering consequence of $210 million only.

Choices really do spell the difference of Big Men from the Little Boys.