Let’s play a little guessing game. We’ll start with an easy one – The founder of which groundbreaking social networking site turned down a $30 million acquisition offer by Google in 2006, an amount that, if paid in shares, would be worth approximately $1 billion today? Okay, now another one – Which social networking site has become a punchline due to the face it more or less invented the genre, then got its butt kicked by a bunch of imitators? And, lastly, a trickier one – which social networking site has over 115 million registered users and is still one of the top 100 global websites based on traffic?

Of course the answer to all those questions is Friendster. Everyone’s first social networking site, Friendster’s meteoric rise and even faster fall is the stuff of legend, and jokes. But much to the surprise of many, I’m sure, the site still gets over 61 million unique visitors a month and is among the most visited sites on the planet. And that’s probably why Friendster just sold for $100 million dollars, to Malaysia’s MOL Global.

Those numbers, and that payday, raise an interesting question. Who the hell uses that site? If nobody you know still rocks a Friendster account, it’s just because you live on the wrong continent. The top 4 countries accessing Friendster are: the Phillipines, Indonesia, Malaysia and South Korea. Yep, apparently Friendster has enjoyed a massive resurgence in Asia, mainly among teenagers.

Oh, and one last question for the guessing game – What’s the 5th country on that list? The United States. Which means that somewhere in the vicinity of a million Americans are still hooked on Friendster. But can you imagine what’ll happen when those folks discover MySpace? It’s going to blow their minds.

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Tags: Friendster, Google, MySpace, Social Media, social networking

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