• Reuters, Thursday, March 8, 2007 11:05 AM

Domestically its been dominated by MySpace and Facebook, but Friendster, one of the original social networks, has picked up steam overseas, enabling the San Francisco-based company to strike a potentially lucrative new ad partnership with Google. Under the deal, Google text and display ads will run on Friendster's user profiles from around the globe, while its search engine will eventually be replaced by Google technology in the second quarter.

Friendster's staying power has to be attributed to its international growth. Expansion into Southeast Asia helped the social networking giant grow its user base from an all-time low of 13.6 million active users in March 2006 to 19.4 million in January, according to comScore Networks. Its top three markets are the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, with the U.S. in fourth. In total, Friendster has more than 37 million registered users in 75 countries, 45% of which comes from Asia. In the U.S., Friendster has sunk to 35th on the list of the Web's community sites, according to traffic monitor Hitwise.

For Google, the Friendster deal marks yet another victory over rival Yahoo, the social network's previous Web search provider. It's also another opportunity to test the search leader's relatively nascent display ad technology.

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