Malaysia's MOL AccessPortal to acquire 100% of Friendster
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Malaysia's MOL AccessPortal to acquire 100% of Friendster
KUALA LUMPUR: MOL Global Pte Ltd is acquiring the entire equity in social networking website operator Friendster Inc, creating an entity with a combined annual revenue exceeding US$110mil upon the completion of the acquisition exercise.
MOL Global is an affiliate of online payment solutions provider MOL AccessPortal Bhd, which has Berjaya Corp Bhd chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) Tan Sri Vincent Tan as the principal shareholder.
Following the acquisition, the operations of MOL and US-based Friendster will be combined to create Asia’s largest end-to-end content, distribution and commerce network.
The combined operations will be paired with MOL’s offline retail channel partners and payment platform with Friendster’s large online footprint, social network and user community in Asia.
MOL AccessPortal president and CEO Ganesh Kumar Bangah said the acquisition had a strategic value and the new entity would retain Friendster’s offices in various locations.
“We are creating a unique company that will be well positioned to provide content to a huge, regional user base here in South-East Asia,” he told a press conference after the parties signed a definitive agreement yesterday.
He said he would become the group CEO of the combined entity while the current CEO of Friendster, Richard Kimber would become the non-executive chairman.
MOL has a network of over 500,000 physical and virtual payment channels across 75 countries worldwide to collect payments for content and services.
Ganesh shrugged off questions on the transaction value of the acquisition, saying “we’re private companies, so we can’t disclose the amount.”
Quoting a source, Reuters reported that Friendster would be sold for more than US$100mil.
An industry blog, TechCrunch, had in July valued Friendster at US$210mil, a fraction of Facebook’s estimated US$10bil valuation.
Kimber said the new combined entity would give Friendster the kind of financial backing, retail distribution and e-commerce infrastructure that would enable the company to further expand in the region.
“We target the acquisition to be completed by year-end,” he said.
He said Friendster had recently launched a new brand and website packed with new features representing a significant milestone in the company’s history and further signifying its focus on the Asian youth market.
“We have 115 million registered users currently with 90% of the daily traffic coming from the Asia region,” he said.
Kenneth Lim
I deleted my friendster account last year.
Anyone here still using Friendster? What’s new in Friendster?
Thank you.
Regards,
Kenneth Lim
Pin
Nothing new, it is just a facelit upgrade on the non-core pages.
Btw, is a lot youngster without credit cards use MOL?
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Poh Ee Lam
Best regards,
Poh Ee, Lam
Email: :L...@PohEe.com
James Yeang, Kong Liang
George Lew
I do believe gaming industry is so profitable. 110mil..is possible.
115millions of users... 5% of the people playing the game...and 10% of the players pay rm50 for items...is more than that ledi
btw, if you go to ask around...many game fanatics paid more than 1K for items.
Best Regards,
George
Not sure where to eat today? Visit http://www.goeatout.com.my!
Pin
George, thanks for sharing.
Mike Tee
The thing with social networks is that you will tend to gravitate towards that which your friends are on. For most of us, it's Facebook, but I believe a big segment of the youth (Chinese & Malay speaking ones, I believe) are on Friendster.
And as mentioned, MOL already makes good money from gaming, so they have good potential to build a business model around Friendster.
On a related note - anybody know what happened to kawanster? :-)
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Thank you & best regards,
Mike Tee,
www.elevyn.com
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