An Asian buyer is said to be acquiring Friendster, one of the world's earliest social networking sites by paying at least $100 million. The site was founded in 2002 but failed to maintain its user level in US in social networking domain. The company had earlier declined to accept the offer of $300 million from search engine major Google six years ago.

The site has now around 100 million registered users in Asia and the deal is most likely to be materializing by the end of this month, according to a person not authorized to divulge details of transaction.

Tencent Holdings, China's largest Internet firm by market value at $35 billion was also said to be in race for acquiring the site but differences over issues like intellectual property caused it to come out of bidding.

Friendster Chief Executive Richard Kimber informed that it would avail services of Morgan Stanley for handling financial matters. The social networking site was valued at $210 million by leading industry blog TechCrunch.

California Headquartered Friendster is currently working on a new and effective monetization strategy besides changing the brand name to woo young population. Work has also been going on for shifting its focus on micro-transaction for generating revenue.