MAKATI CITY, Philippines -- A third of the traffic going to social networking site Friendster are contributed by Filipinos or at least the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses are from the Philippines, an executive told INQUIRER.net.

Of the 39 million unique visitors recorded in March 2008, about 13.2 million unique users are from the Philippines, said David Jones, vice president for global marketing of Friendster, in an interview.

Jones said that if there are 14 million Internet users in the Philippines as of 2007, about 98 percent are going to Friendster.

These figures indicate that Filipinos make up the biggest population of Friendster users in the world, even surpassing the United States, where the service was originally launched.

Such numbers have prompted the social networking site to consider the Philippines as a major market for its services, including its mobile service, Jones said.

Typically, Filipino Friendster users are in the age range of 16 to 30 years old, with 55 percent of them being female.

There are 15 countries around the world where Friendster is now popular. They are the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, the United States, Singapore, Canada, India, Australia, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, China, Taiwan and Korea.

Jones said Friendster was launched in Vietnam recently.

Asia remains the biggest market for Friendster, considering it has over 50 million registered users and 34 million monthly unique visitors coming from this region according to the social networking, citing figures from the comScore Media Matrix worldwide data in March 2008.

Until September 2007, Friendster was an English-only social networking website. Today, it now supports seven languages.

Jones said Friendster is currently getting much of its business from advertising on the website. But recently, the company has moved to the mobile phone space, allowing people to access their profile using their mobile handsets.

He said there are now over 450 social networking websites in the world. Friendster currently has over 68 million registered users.