Friendster Acquired by Malaysia's MOL AccessPortal

MOL Global Pte Ltd, a Malaysian company, will acquire 100 per cent of social networking site, Friendster. MOL Global is an affiliate of leading online payment solutions provider, MOL AccessPortal Bhd (MOL). News of Friendster for Sale emerged in July 2009.

The acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of this year, MOL chief executive officer, Ganesh Kumar Bangah, said on Thursday.

He, however, declined to disclose the investment for the acquisition.

Richard Kimber, the chief executive offficer of Friendster will become the non-executive chairman, while Ganesh will be the group CEO of the combined entity.

The enlarged entity will have revenue of about US$110mil once the merger is completed, said Ganesh at the signing ceremony on Thursday.

The merger will see both parties working together to create Asia’s largest end-to-end content, distribution and commerce network, pairing MOL’s retail channel partners and payment platform with Friendster’s large online footprint and network in the region.

It will build upon an initial set of products to deliver content to be distributed to Friendster’s community, and monetise via micro-transactions, using MOL’s payment platform.

MOL core markets are Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and India with over 500,000 physical and virtual payment channels across 75 countries.

With transactions of over US$200mil annually, MOL will extend its online reach to 115 million Friendster users, dominated mostly by the Asian community.

Kimber said almost 90 million Friendsters users are Asian.

Friendster, has launched a new brand, targeting Asian youth.

According to Kimber, the merger and focus reflect Friendster’s dominant position among the youth audience in Asia.

“This is just the beginning of a series of new products and services catering to the needs of our users and in a way, unmatched by any other social network,” he said.