Category: Outlets – CNet News

CNET NEWS — July 7 — Troubled Friendster has been awarded a broad patent covering social networking that could cover activities of rival sites. The U.S. patent, which was awarded June 27, is extremely general, and would seem to cover the activities of many other sites, especially those like LinkedIn that allow people to connect within a certain number of degrees of separation. Asked whether Friendster would sue, President Kent Lindstrom said "It’s way too early to say…We’ll do what we can to protect our intellectual property." FULL ARTICLE @ CNET NEWS

Mark Brooks: Founder Jonathan Abrams applied for this patent early on. 

CNET NEWS — Apr 28 — Facebook expanded its membership to the corporate world, currently allowing only employees of a select 10 companies and one nonprofit to join Facebook using their respective .com and .org addresses.  Last week Facebook secured a $25 million second round of funding led by Greylock Partners. 

The full article was originally published at CNet News, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: Facebook continues to reel in high caliber, high value eyeballs.

CNET NEWS — Apr 12 — eBay invested $2 million in social networking company Meetup.com. eBay’s founder and board chairman, Pierre Omidyar, holds more than a 10% stake in Meetup.  Last month, Meetup announced it received investments from eBay, Omidyar Network, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Allen & Co., former Sen. Bill Bradley and Esther Dyson, which amounted to more than a 10% stake in the company, collectively.  FULL ARTICLE @ CNET NEWS

Mark Brooks: Pierre Omidyar likes to invest in community oriented startups. Meetup is hiring for a VP/Marketing, Director of Biz Dev, Product Manager and others. 

CNET NEWS — Jan 11 — Social networking Web sites are all the rage these days. Sites such as Friendster, MySpace, Facebook and others allow users to create little corners of the Internet that are all their own.  On Dogster, which won the 2005 Webby Award in the community category, Web savvy humans take a back seat to their lovable companions.  FULL ARTICLE @ CNET NEWS

Mark Brooks: So what’s Dogster worth?

CNET NEWS — Dec 9 — Friendster has apparently drawn the fancy of Mickey Mouse.  Media giant Disney has shown interest in the company, according to sources. It’s unclear, however, if Disney has backed away from the table, they say. But whatever the case, traditional media companies like Disney have once again been investing in and buying up Internet properties to build up their operations online.  FULL ARTICLE @ CNET

CNET — Nov 14 — Friendster has hired a banker (Montgomery & Co., a boutique investment banking firm in Santa Monica) to find a buyer, CNET News.com has learned. Company executives have been talking to several Internet media companies about an acquisition, according to those sources.  According to one source, it was looking for a sale price in the ballpark of $200 million. Now its price has been lowered to the range of $50 million to $100 million.  From September 2003 to March 2004–during the height of Friendster’s popularity–it drew more than 1 million unique visitors per month, according to Nielsen.  Since then, Friendster’s traffic has fallen to roughly half that. The site has roughly 21 million members.  FULL ARTICLE @ CNET

Mark Brooks: Hopefully, if Friendster sells, it will sell for $100 million or more.  $50 million seems awfully low given that it was valued at over $30 million for it’s first VC round.  It’s still a very considerable internet property and holds a lot of promise.

CNET — Nov 10 — Friendster dug deep into its network to pull out the e-mail addresses of people who didn't initially respond to friends' invites to join the online social network a year or more ago.  The e-mails implied they were coming from a friend when, in fact, they were being sent by the company. The e-mails went out during the last two weeks.  "I could think of about 10 different ways for Friendster to improve itself, but spamming those who didn't care to join in the first place isn't one of them," said Adam Finley, who publishes the blog AdJab. Friendster spokesman Jeff Roberto called this a misconception. "We're not in the business of spamming," he said. The campaign, he added, was a one-time mailing to people who were once invited but never joined the network.  The e-mail was designed to communicate with people who may have missed invites because of technical difficulties on the site, or may not know about new features, such as blogs, video and file sharing.

The full article was originally published at CNet, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: Friendster is pulling out the stops to regain lost ground.