Friendster Finds No Love

THE DEAL — May 4 — Several companies that initially expressed interest in buying Friendster were reluctant to take on the company’s ~$6 million debt and balked at the modest $10 million asking price.  ‘Friendster unfortunately was losing money and losing market share, and that’s not a great dynamic.’  In September Friendster 2.0 launched, emulating features offered by competitors.  The upgrade stanched the bleeding. As of March, Friendster had 1.1 million U.S. uniques, up 9% from 975,000 visitors in March 2005. MySpace had 41.9 million unique users, and Facebook had 12.9 million uniques.

Uniques (millions) to selected social networking sites, March 2006 (comScore Media Metrix) – MYSPACE.COM 42,  FACEBOOK.COM 13,  XANGA.COM 7, LIVEJOURNAL.COM 4,  Yahoo! 360° 4,  MYYEARBOOK.COM 4,  HI5.COM 3, TAGWORLD.COM 2,  TAGGED.COM 2,  BEBO.COM 1,  FRIENDSTER.COM 1,  Tribe Networks .9, 43THINGS.COM .7,  SCONEX.COM .4,  Total Internet audience: 171 million.  FULL ARTICLE @ THE DEAL

Mark Brooks: Jonathan Abrams knew Friendster would do well.  He just didn’t quite expect its growth to be meteoric.  It was a victim of its own success and deserves a second chance.  Friendster 2.0 is delightfully feature rich but the GUI needs a revamp.