Friendster and Australian/Kiwi women’s sport

This entry was posted by Laura on Sunday, 28 November, 2010 at

friendster is small social networks.  Alexa ranks it as the 685th most popular site on the Internet and the 1,483th most popular site in Australia.  It is not nearly as popular as Facebook or Twitter, but is more popular than bebo and appears to have a slightly more active community.  In 2009, friendster was acquired by an Asian company and sought a more Asian audience and worked to improve the mobile version of the site.  Given that, the direction of the site, if Australian and Kiwi sport teams are looking at friendster, it should probably be with an eye towards growing their Asian audience.  This focus would not necessarily lend itself to women’s sport outside of soccer.

Despite the potentially limiting audience and best approach to using the site, it is worth looking at as the more sites examined, the greater the understanding of how Australian and Kiwi women sport fandom exist on the Internet.

One of the ways friendster fosters communities is through groups.  There are several Australian sport related groups, including one for the Socceroos with over a hundred members and one for the Melbourne Victory with over sixty.   While this community for men’s sport exist, the same does not appear to be true for women.

Searching friendster groups is done by country.  For this, search was conducted for Australian groups.  If quotation marks are not used, every group that mentions any of those terms is used.  That means that pages and pages of search results need to be sorted through or quotation marks need to be used in order to improve search results.  This is not ideal as many women’s sport teams use common words or have multiple names, if sponsor names are considered.  The results below give an idea as to how this plays out.

League Team Keyword Groups Checked
ANZ Championship West Coast Fever West Coast Fever 1006 16-Aug-10
ANZ Championship West Coast Fever West Coast Fever 1006 27-Nov-10
ANZ Championship West Coast Fever West Coast Fever 0 27-Nov-10
ANZ Championship Melbourne Vixens Melbourne Vixens 0 27-Nov-10
W-League Canberra United Canberra United 1010 27-Nov-10
W-League Canberra United Canberra United 0 27-Nov-10
W-League W-League W-League 1002 27-Nov-10
W-League W-League W-League 0 27-Nov-10
WNBL Perth Lynx Perth Lynx 326 16-Aug-10
WNBL West Coast Waves West Coast Waves 1006 16-Aug-10
WNBL Townsville Fire Townsville Fire 1007 27-Nov-10
WNBL Townsville Fire Townsville Fire 0 27-Nov-10
WNCL Western Fury Western Fury 1010 16-Aug-10
Women’s World Cup Soccer Matildas Matildas 0 27-Nov-10
Women’s World Cup Soccer Football Ferns Football Ferns 1005 27-Nov-10
Women’s World Cup Soccer Football Ferns Football Ferns 0 27-Nov-10

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