Friendster to delete users' content by May 31

Attention, Friendster users: You have until May 31 to save your account contents including photos, testimonials, and blogs —or else you'll lose them in the social network's upcoming major reformat.

Friendster, a pioneer social networking site launched in 2002, issued the warning as it prepares a "new and improved version" in the coming weeks.

"Your Friendster account will not be deleted. You will still have the same email login and password in the new Friendster. Also, your list of friends will be preserved, along with your basic profile information. However, all the photos, messages, comments, testimonials, shoutouts, blogs, forums and groups that you may have now will no longer be part of your account by May 31, 2011," it said in its help forum.

To be preserved are the user's list of friends, along with basic profile information, wallet, and games.

But to help the user save his or her account content, Friendster offered an application to help download or export photos and blogs securely to third party sites, such as Flickr or Multiply.

Dubbed the Friendster Exporter, the app will be rolled out gradually and is now available for users inSingapore.

Users in the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia can expect the app to be available in a few days after April 14, it added.

It said that the app will be available to all Friendster users before the end of April 2011.

Relaunching Friendster

Friendster was acquired in December 2009 by MOL Global, the parent company of Asia’s leading online payment solutions provider MOL AccessPortal Berhad.

Friendster said that it and MOL have been combined to create Asia's largest end-to-end content, distribution and commerce network, pairing MOL's offline retail channel partners and payment platform with Friendster's large online footprint, social network and user community in Asia.

But MOL CEO Ganesh Bangah explained that the new Friendster aims not to compete with, but instead to complement, Facebook.

Complementing Facebook

He noted that, while Facebook is a site where people can communicate with and find out what their real-life friends are doing, Friendster will be the place where people can meet new friends and play games and enjoy music with them. The pioneering social network will continue to innovate and be at the forefront of the social networking scene, he said in an article on ZDNet Asia.

Friendster said that its "new and improved" version will be focused on entertainment and fun, and will have new features to better enable users to connect with friends or engage new friends with similar interests.

"Our improved site is designed to create new profiles that allow you to connect differently with people and do things differently than other networking sites. Basically, the new site will complement your existing online presence in other social networking sites," the company said.

Popular in Asia

A July 15, 2010 article in the Global Post said that, while Friendster lost users in the United States to MySpace and Facebook in the mid-2000s, the social network exploded in the Philippines, where nearly half of its userbase is located.

It said that Friendster later spread to Malaysia and Indonesia.

Now, roughly 80 percent of Friendster’s 116 million users live in Southeast Asia, the report said. — TJD, GMA News

WD TV Live Hub

The WD TV Live Hub media centre puts all your personal entertainment right on the 1TB hard drive, so it's easily accessible. Enjoy music, videos, photos or even the stuff you love to watch on the Internet – an Ethernet connection makes it a cinch to get connected to your wired network, while Full HD playback lets you enjoy spectacular picture quality on your HDTV.

Product Features

Load up the high-capacity drive with all your media to create your own personal media jukebox. With just a few clicks, you can play your home movies, share vacation slideshows, and play your music on the big screen and sound system in your living room.

• Access popular Internet content from the comfort of your living room via wired network connection
• Full HD 1080p video playback makes this Hub the perfect partner for your compatible HDTV
• Use the programmable remote control to make your entertainment choices using animated navigation menus
• Play almost any type of media file; the WD TV Live Hub supports a wide variety of the most popular file formats including HD camcorder video formats (no need to spend time transcoding)
• Store all your media on the 1TB hard drive, and the Live Hub finds and categorizes it all and displays it in one easy-to-view menu system
• Copy, move or delete files stored on a USB drive, a network drive, your camcorder, or a camera to the Live Hub built-in drive using the on-screen menus
• Stream any file on the WD TV Live Hub media center to a WD TV Live Plus or WD TV Live media player or any DLNA/UPnP compatible TV, Blu-ray Disc player, or game console
• Powerful enough to handle multiple streams so you can stream a movie in one room, while viewing photos on your TV upstairs
• Cool, quiet and ultra-compact design
• Supports a wireless network connection to your home network with an optional USB wireless adapter (sold separately)
• HDMI 1.4, composite video and component video output 
• An optical audio output sends digital signals to your AV receiver for the best surround sound experience

CLICK HERE FOR MORE..

Messi Facebook page draws over 6 million

Following tens of millions of other social media fans worldwide,Barcelona midfield star Lionel Messi set up a Facebook page on Wednesday.

In contrast to his electronic peers, however, within just a few hours his page had attracted more than six million followers.

Such popularity warranted a speedy response from the Argentina international.

"Welcome to everyone and thanks for all the messages you have been sending me. Now we shall be closer with Facebook," said the two-time world footballer of the year, whose followers come from all corners of the globe.

Messi, 23, was later hoping to help propel Barcelona towards the Champions League semi-finals with Barca taking on Ukraine's Shakhtar Donetsk at the Nou Camp Wednesday.

Assuming the three-time winners advance they will likely face La Liga rivals Real Madrid, 4-0 up from their first leg with Tottenham- a semi-final which will doubtless attract a welter of further posts from player and fans alike.

Greed and technology tempt insider trading culprits

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Rooting out one dishonest investment banker amongst the hundreds who sign confidentiality agreements for a merger is virtually impossible despite the checks and balances banks put in place.

On Wednesday, U.S. federal prosecutors accused two men of running a 17-year conspiracy to trade on corporate merger secrets stolen from three of the nation's most powerful law firms, including venerable Silicon Valley firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati PC.

The charges come amid a broad government crackdown on insider trading, including the criminal trial of Galleon Group hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam and last month's charges that a U.S. Food and Drug Administration chemist traded on insider information about drug approvals.

Questions also have surfaced about David Sokol, a former top deputy to Warren Buffett who quit Berkshire Hathaway Inc last week amid questions over his trading in stock of a company Berkshire later agreed to buy.

Despite clear rules governing non-disclosure of inside information, investment bank's large compliance departments, and code words used to conceal merger partners' identities, insider trading cases still continue to happen.

"You can't legislate human behavior. People will act as people will do," David Lazarus, senior managing director, co-founder, EdgeRock Realty Advisors, said at the Reuters Global Mergers and Acquisitions Summit in New York.

"The greed of humans and the way it's structured in the U.S. is a good thing because it's the way of capitalism, but there's always those people who will go over the line," Lazarus said.

In any given merger auction, for example, several hundred people ranging from investment bankers and lawyers to corporate executives and public relations consultants and event planners may know private information that could move the stock market.

"You have three advisors with five people teams. Another 10 at the firms who know they're working on it. You have a couple of law firms. Eleven bidders you sent books to. The universe gets to 250 people pretty damn quick. It's very, very hard to manage that kind of information," Lazarus said.

"The way info flows these days: computers, emails, fax, texts -- very, very hard to manage these processes in a way that they can stay confidential," Lazarus said.

Still, every firm, boss and co-worker needs to be vigilant to make sure sensitive information remains private, bankers said.

"When people come to me and say 'Gee, I'm thinking of investing,' or I see someone trade a lot of stocks in my group, my antenna goes up because I don't do it," said Jackson Hsieh, vice chairman of UBS investment banking group.

"People start spending in unusual ways, buying certain things, basic stuff, you have to ask questions -- what happened? You married a rich wife? You inherited it?" Hsieh said.

"It's a small percentage but it does happen. People do stupid things," Hsieh said.

Corporations, banks and law firms have long had rules in place about the disclosure of proprietary information. Compliance departments also oversee the stock trades of employees and ethics training happens for new and existing employees, bankers said.

"We all have very, very careful procedures," said Garrett Moran, chief operating officer of the private equity group at Blackstone Group LP "You just don't do a trade unless you ask your compliance department in advance."

"I think it's really a question of executing on policies, people being more vigilant, educating junior bankers in the right way, making sure people don't get arrogant or view their role in transactions in a different way than they have historically or how policies would dictate," said Brad Whitman, co-head of FIG M&A at Barclays Capital.

"Confidentiality and conflicts and Chinese walls and all that are taken incredibly seriously. It could destroy your reputation in the market. It's staying focused and making sure no one is trying to elevate themselves above their clients or our institutions," Whitman said.

Another insider trading case in 2009 included an executive at the Blackstone Group, who was charged with masterminding a $3.6 million scheme.

"These stories are incredible -- that someone would put themselves above the clients and above the firm and I think just mis-assessing. Their judgment is just way off," Whitman said.