如果你在马来西亚、新加坡或菲律宾的中学走廊里,曾经为了一句 testimonial 跟死党讨价还价半天 —— Friendster 回来了。

The early-2000s social network that ran every Southeast Asian high schooler's online life before Facebook took over has officially relaunched. The new Friendster app went live on the iOS App Store on 29 April 2026, under new ownership and with a philosophy that's deliberately the opposite of every social platform you've used since.

Who brought it back

The revival is driven by Mike Carson, a Philadelphia-based computer programmer, who bought the Friendster domain for around US$30,000 — paid via a mix of Bitcoin and a revenue-generating domain swap — and later secured the trademarks. Carson has been open about his motivation: he wanted to rebuild the kind of social platform he remembered from the early 2000s, before engagement-driven feeds made everyone's timeline a stress test.

What's actually different about the new Friendster

The new app is being marketed as "slow social" — and the design choices are unusual enough that it's worth listing them out:

No ads. Not "less ads", not "ads coming soon" — the app does not run advertising of any kind.

No algorithm. There's no AI-driven feed, no engagement-based ranking, no "for you" page. You see what your friends post, in order.

Tap-phone-to-add-friend. This is the headline feature. To add someone as a friend, the two of you must physically tap your phones together. There is no search-and-add, no "people you may know", no friend requests from strangers. If you haven't met in person, you can't connect.

Relationship decay. Connections weaken over time if you don't actually see each other in real life. The longer you go without an in-person meet-up, the less prominent that friend becomes in your network.

The pitch, in short: a social app that only works if you have an actual social life.

The catch — your old testimonials are gone

Bad news for anyone hoping to dig up their 2006 profile: all original Friendster content — testimonials, photos, blogs, profile songs, the lot — was permanently deleted by the time the platform fully shut down in 2018. The 2026 reintroduction runs on entirely new infrastructure. Old logins don't work, and there is no archive to restore from. Whatever your 14-year-old self wrote on a friend's profile is, mercifully or tragically, gone forever.

Where you can get it (and where you might not)

At launch the app is iOS only. Carson has confirmed an Android version and a return of the web version are on the roadmap, but neither has a public timeline.

A Chinese-language social media post that's been circulating in the region since 30 April claims Friendster is "currently only available in Malaysia". International coverage from outlets like The Register and Manila Times has not confirmed any regional restriction — the App Store listing appears in multiple Southeast Asian markets. We'd treat the Malaysia-only line as an unverified claim until Friendster's team confirms it directly. If you're in Singapore or elsewhere in the region and the App Store shows the app, you can download it.

Will it stick?

Honestly? Hard to say. The "slow social" pitch is genuinely interesting, and there's a real audience of millennials who burned out on Instagram and TikTok years ago. But a network's value compounds with the people on it — and Friendster's biggest advantage in 2005 (everyone you knew was on it) is exactly what the 2026 version is starting from zero on.

For 80s and 90s kids across Southeast Asia, the question isn't whether the new app is technically good. It's whether enough of the old gang shows up to make it feel like Friendster again.

Sources

  • The Register — "Friendster rises from the grave to deshittify social media" (27 April 2026, theregister.com).
  • The Manila Times — "Friendster returns with focus on privacy and real connections" (30 April 2026, manilatimes.net).