Friendster and Grouper Partnership Fuels Personal Media File Sharing

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Nov. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Friendster and Grouper Networks today announced a partnership that will allow Friendster users to share unlimited personal media files with each other using Grouper's personal sharing network.

Grouper(TM), launched by the founders of Spinner (now AOL Radio), enables people to share personally-created media like video and photos to the audience of their choice -- friends, family or the general public. Users have the ability to share unlimited amounts of media because Grouper leverages a distributed computing platform. For example, you can share unlimited personal video, pictures, and stream music with your friends!

Friendster, the leading social networking site, provides users a built-in audience for their media -- millions of photos and thousands of videos are updated, viewed and forwarded on Friendster every day. The Grouper/Friendster partnership will extend this, allowing users to:

  -- Share your media: Showcase your personality and get to know friends'
     interests by sharing your own video and photos.
  -- Notify your friends: As soon as you share new video and photos let your
     friends know with built-in communications tools: email, IM and chat.
  -- Make new friends: Attract new friends and find common interests with
     the Grouper Directory and Friendster Network.

"Peer-to-Peer is one of those disruptive technologies, like social networking, that just changes the game. Yesterday, the game was about sharing 10 or 20 photos. Today, it's about what you can create -- there are no limits," said Taek Kwon, CEO, Friendster. "With this partnership, Friendster has leapfrogged other social networking sites. We've shown that a social network provides a context and relevant audience for personal media that used to be hidden on photo sharing sites or personal computers. Now it's a matter of applying that context and audience to an unlimited amount of media."

"Grouper's personal media network was created to make it easy and fun for people to share the videos and photos they shoot," said Josh Felser, CEO Grouper Networks. "Enabling Friendster users to share unlimited numbers of videos and photos dramatically enhances the social networking dynamic, creating more interesting and interactive ways to connect."

About Friendster

Friendster is the leading online community for making new friends, communicating with existing friends, sharing information, organizing activities, finding dates, and reconnecting with lost friends. Friendster has received several industry awards, including Time Magazine's 50 Coolest Websites of 2004 and Coolest Inventions of 2003. Friendster is a privately-held corporation headquartered in Mountain View, California, and is backed by Kleiner Perkins, Benchmark Capital, Battery Ventures and individual investors.

About Grouper

Grouper Networks enables people to share the video and photos they've created anyway they want. Launched in the fall of 2004, the company's downloadable application Grouper(TM) was the first file sharing network designed from the bottom up for consumer-created media. Grouper Networks is located in Mill Valley, California. For more information visit http://www.grouper.com/ or call 415-877-4800

CONTACT: Jeff Roberto of Friendster Public Relations, +1-650-237-1411, or jroberto@friendster.com; or Elizabeth Scheuring of Grouper Public Relations, +1-415-877-4802, or Elizabeth@grouper.com.