POPULAR social networking site Friendster is turning to big-name brands and celebrities to set up profiles in order to generate traffic to its website.

Although this plan is still in its infant stage, Friendster marketing director Jeff Roberto, who spoke to The Sunday Times during his recent trip to Singapore, said it is also looking at models and non-profit organisations to sign up as its members.

One such example of 'invited' members is popular American retailer JC Penny. Its regular customers sign up so that they can get updates on its new products.

Malaysian singer Karen Kong also has a Friendster profile and it is bursting with requests for fans who want to be linked to her. The 22-year-old rising star has gained more than 92,000 fans on Friendster since she set up a profile in January last year.

Facing competition from an ever-increasing number of social networking sites since its launch five years ago, Friendster has introduced new features for its users. Its members can customise their homepages and share videos and music through their own personal profile page.

It has even modified the service to allow real-time updates of birthdays, photos and other updates of friends in your network.

Sponsoring of skins on Friendster - which allow the customising of one's profile by adding a unique background - has also taken off.

This function lets users control the image of their homepages and gives big brands another avenue to advertise.

Friendster recently signed a deal with Google which will boost its influence on the cyberworld by leveraging on Google's powerful search technologies and targeted advertising.

A Google search bar has been added to the Friendster interface which allows users to use the search engine easily.

Advertisers too, through this partnership, would be able to gain access to one of the largest online social networking communities in the world.

Such social networking websites have sprouted like mushroom in recent years, although most still cater to niche groups.

The latest to jump on the bandwagon is Ning, which allows its users to pick the features they want to include in their networks, such as videos, photos, discussion forums or blogs.

Mr Roberto, 32, said Friendster's popularity is not slipping despite people having more alternative sites to choose from now.

'I don't think we're losing new users. In fact, we are seeing the numbers of our registered users grow everyday.'

Friendster was set up in April 2002, when founder Jonathan Abrams stumbled upon the idea of setting up a social networking database after an unsatisfying experience with an online dating site he had used.

Because he could not make any personal connection with the women he was looking at on the site, the American said the process was very impersonal. He believed that there was a better and safer way to meet people, using his friends as a trusted referral network.

Friendster became so popular so quickly that even its network was unable to support such a large surge in demand.

Constantly plagued with problems such as slow picture upload speeds as well as delayed page loads, Friendster scrambled to pull its act together by strengthening the site's technology to withstand large traffic surges.

Reaching its fifth birthday next month, the social networking website now has 36 million members worldwide, 1.6 million of them from Singapore.

And the numbers from Singapore are still growing.

Last month, at least 200,000 new Singaporean users signed up with Friendster, Mr Roberto revealed.

'We constantly keep our users updated by actively pushing content to them unlike other sites where you have to look for them yourself,' he said.

According to online traffic tracking website Alexa.com, Singapore is ranked third in terms of the number of registered Friendster users around the world, behind Malaysia and the Philippines.

Friendster is also among Hitwise.com's Top 10 industry search terms in Singapore, beating other huge cyber names such as YouTube and Yahoo.

Ironically, Friendster is not so hot in the United States, where its founder is based. It ranks 13th in Hitwise.com's Top 20 social networking sites, with MySpace, Facebook and LiveJournal among the more popular ones.

Undergraduate Tan Peiqi, 22, who has about 180 friends on her network, logs onto Friendster at least once every two days to keep in touch with what is happening in her friends' lives.

She finds the 'Recent Updates' section very useful, saying: 'It allows me to be updated on my friends lives very quickly.'

tcheryl@sph.com.sg

This article first appeared in ST on March 18, 2007