Out with Yahoo and in with Google as search provider and ad serving technology for the ailing Friendster.
Friendster – the pioneer social network founded in 2002 by Jonathan Abrams – is going to partner with Google to place ads on the community site and to power the search technology. It’s a deal similar to the Google/MySpace partnership inked last year. The financials were not disclosed for the approximately two-year deal. Of course, Friendster’s sub-1 million monthly unique visitors pale in comparison to MySpace, so it’s hardly close to the $900 million that Google agreed to pay News Corp to be the ad provider and exclusive search engine for Fox’s online properties, including MySpace. By partnering with Google (goog), Friendster will stop using Yahoo (yhoo) as its search engine.
Bambi says Friendster is trying to establish itself as the hip ‘after college’ social network, but I think that Facebook is doing nicely in that area already. Friendster should try something innovative, like becoming a parody of itself or really making fun of it’s position. They could be the Rodney Dangerfield of social networking. Certainly they are at a point that something innovative has to be done or they will never re-succeed.