A social networking site that has not exactly been at the forefront of the market that giants Myspace and Facebook now dominate, Friendster is looking to gain some ground in the extremely popular and lucrative business. We have learned at DigitalLife 2007 that Friendster has launched a feature called Fan Profiles. This feature allows artists and celebrities – including musicians, actors, athletes, models, politicians, and entertainers – to connect with their fans in basically every way imaginable. Fan Profiles work through a system of fanbase aggregators that increase the exposure of the organization or individual. Once the organization or individual has acquired a large amount of friends on the site, they have the ability to send bulk e-mails or notifications to their fanbase to make them aware of announcements or changes to their profile. In this way, Fan Profiles is similar to Facebook, but the the site’s functional parallels to Myspace cannot be ignored either.

One does not have to stretch their brain very far to reveal the obvious implications this could have for the professional gaming world, where all-too-often the elite teams and players lose contact with their loyal fans. Besides the increase communication between player and fan, this Friendster feature could carry the benefit of heightening the exposure of professional gaming on the international level.

If you are interested in social networking and have a few profiles of your own, check out this Fan Profiles thing and leave a comment in this story describing your experiences. We have not tried it out yet, so we don’t really have any opinions on it. Though from reading the details, Fan Profiles seems like a nice way to say “massive spammage”.