Friendster Web Chat On The Horizon

As reported by Techcrunch, Friendster is rumored to be building a web chat client to integrate into their social networking platform. It is common knowledge that Friendster was the first well known SN to popularize the friend of a friend system. Ever since their early days they have been really struggling, losing a lot of members to Myspace and Facebook.

I don’t know why Friendster is building a web chat client. It doesn’t seem to add any value to their social networking service. There are a ton of IM clients that dominate the market. The behavior of most users is to meet someone on an SN site, get their IM screename (AIM, MSN, Yahoo, etc.) from that site, and start messaging them on that IM service. Having two or more chat services open on my screen seems pretty undesirable.
Bottom line, I don’t think a web chat client is going to drive more traffic or increase membership on Friendster when that should be their primary goal as of right now. It seems they have lost all thoughts of innovation, and instead have decided to copy whatever Myspace is doing.

[tags]Social Networking, Friendster, Friendster Mobs, Myspace, Instant Messaging, Brian Balfour[/tags]