Friendster raises $20 million, nabs a Googler to be CEO
Friendster, the formative social network of the modern web era that became a verb for rollercoaster failure and then took over large chunks of the Asian market, has some good news this evening.
It has raised $20 million and plucked Richard Kimber, Google’s regional managing director for South Asia, to be its new chief executive.
IDG Ventures led the round, with existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures and Founders Fund participating.
While Friendster is the largest social network in countries like Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia and other countries, it is — like most of its rivals — still figuring out how to be a big business. Kimber has experience making money for Google in South Asia. It’s not clear if that includes Orkut, Google’s social network that’s popular in India (and Brazil) or other social Google properties.
ComScore stats on Friendster, from June:
22.1 billion page views per month
215 minutes per visitor per month
37.1 million per month, 33 million of which were in Asia
[Photo via ABC.]
Next Story: Ahead of deployment, Brilliant Telecom adds to its round
Previous Story: Zany iPhone app update: Abacus, Snow, Stock Command, Laval, BarHopper, lighter apps and Coin Flip
About the Author, Eric Eldon
Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.