Behind the Music: Friendster -- Everyone loves a come back story...... well here's the downfall part - now let's see what the come back will be.....
New York Times: Friendster, Love and Money By GARY RIVLIN
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 23 - Fifteen months ago, Friendster enjoyed the kind of enviable status that Silicon Valley start-ups dream of: A-list investors and millions of users flocking to its Web site to browse profiles posted by friends and friends' friends, in search of dates or playmates. So great was the buzz surrounding the company in the second half of 2003 that Friendster, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., helped define a hot new facet of the Internet dubbed "social networking."
People are again buzzing about Friendster. But that is because the company, which endured three chief executives during 2004, has seen a spate of senior executives depart in recent weeks. Just as troubling, a younger, flashier rival called MySpace has eclipsed Friendster, at least in the United States, among those in the most highly coveted 18 to 29 demographic. And Friendster loyalists have groused that the company has done almost nothing to enliven its site.
"I think Friendster really missed their big opportunity," said Mark J. Pincus, who is an investor in Friendster and the founder of Tribe Networks, a budding social networking Web site that hopes to capture some of the print classified advertising market. "They weren't quick to turn on new functionality, where a company like MySpace kept innovating and adding new features."
In the fall of 2003, when social networking first became all the rage in Silicon Valley, the looming question was whether these new sites were viable businesses or the kind of phenomenon that generates headlines but no money. ... Friendster has proven a disappointment, at least to many early users, who gripe that the site does not give much reason to return once the thrill of trolling profiles and seeing a representation of your social network wears off. ... "They've gone dark for the last six to eight months," said Ms. Danly, who described herself as an outside marketing consultant. "They're reorganizing. They're getting prepared to launch some things." ...For his part, venture capitalist John Doerr, a Friendster board member and a partner at Kleiner Perkins, said that he and his partners were still optimistic about the roughly $5 million they had invested in Friendster. "We couldn't be more pleased with the job Scott Sassa(3rd ceo) has done since coming on board," said Mr. Doerr, whose early investments include Google and Amazon.com. "He has figured out how to make a business of this." is revenue all from advertising?
Mr. Doerr would not provide details about Friendster's business plan except to say that the company would announce a partnership deal in February that "I can only describe as huge." what was it? And he said last week that Friendster would "reach profitability within the next 90 days." There is no cost for joining or browsing Friendster; advertising on the site generates most of the company's revenues. ok.
... The average visit to Friendster was less than 17 minutes, the rating service found, compared to 78 minutes at MySpace. "It's unique visitors and page views that drive your revenues, not registered users," said Chris DeWolfe, chief executive at MySpace in Los Angeles. MySpace began primarily as a music site where users, after posting a profile, could organize around favorite bands, hear snippets of new songs and find out who was playing where and when. MySpace now hosts sites for 110,000 musicians, and the rock group R.E.M. huh is among the bands that have used the site to pre-release new albums. Users can converse via instant message, play games, contribute to blogs or browse through a range of local cultural events. "I had never been interested in investing in a social networking site," said Geoffrey Y. Yang, a venture capitalist with Redpoint Ventures, who said he is days away from investing in MySpace. "But these guys in a sense are trying to be an MTV for the Internet, where social networking is just a key piece around which everything else revolves rather than social networking per se."
Google introduced a Friendster-style service last January dubbed Orkut. Orkut began as a plaything for Silicon Valley's digerati but, oddly enough, has morphed into a site where the primary language is Portuguese. huh. right- evhead (below somewhere dlww) re so many brazilians on web. Nearly two in three registered Orkut users hail from Brazil; Americans account for only one in 11 registered users. Similarly, Friendster is wildly popular among 18 to 21 years olds living in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, who account for a huge portion of Friendster's most active users.
January 24, 2005 Permalink