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On the iconic American TV show Saturday Night Live, comedians Seth Myers and Amy Poehler have a regular segment called "Really?", in which they take a ridiculous fact and make merciless fun of it for a few minutes. (Here's a recent example, from when New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was caught with his pants down with a hooker from New Jersey.)
In that spirit: Friendster is hugely popular in Indonesia? Really?! Nothing against that particular social network, but in the U.S. at least, Friendster was popular about five years ago and then faded fast into oblivion. But according to tech blogger extraordinaire Budi Putra, a full 60% of Indonesian Internet users have a Friendster account.
Say wha? It's like hearing about a friend who's really into 8-track cassettes. I remember reading Wall Street Journal stories and PBS reports that remarked on Friendster's downfall, along with the strange fact that it was still popular in the Phillipines. It seems we can add Indonesia to that list.
As a Facebook addict myself, I have an interest in seeing all my buddies in one place, and not gathering on a dying platform. At least I can take comfort in the other bit of Budi's news, which is that Facebook is the fastest-growing social network in Indonesia, with a 645% growth rate in 2008 and over 800,000 Indonesians already getting on board. At a population of hundreds of millions, though, Facebook still has a long way to go.
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