And so after the green-looking makeover, the 100 million dollar asian-trade rumor, all has been official now. Yes folks, Friendster has been sold with an estimated $110 million worth to Mol Global Company – A Malaysian payment company that looks like a site which caters a ‘pay for play’ type of business-model.
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.
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