SACRAMENTO NEWS & REVIEW — Dec 16 — The (social networking) trend started with the fatally successful Friendster, which became slow and unwieldy as the site’s traffic grew beyond its capacity. Friendster began losing its enthusiastic participants to Tribe.net, MySpace and other competing networking sites. These days, it would seem that MySpace has emerged the victor. Its appeal lies chiefly in the fact that users’ profile pages are highly customizable–video clips, music, custom backgrounds and fonts. MySpace admins are doing their best to enforce the site’s no-nudity rule. (It would seem to be a losing battle.) Reynoso gave up his personal MySpace profile when he began spending hours a day online. He now concentrates solely on his band page but there are still times when he gets sucked down the MySpace rabbit hole. “You see a good-looking girl, and you click on her pic. And then you see another good-looking girl on her friends list, and you click.” SACRAMENTO NEWS & REVIEW

Mark Brooks: MySpace reached the ultimate social connectors — musicians and DJs. Then they allowed them to express themselves musically and graphically on MySpace. Then they came from ‘left field’ and trumped Friendster.

SACRAMENTO NEWS & REVIEW — Dec 16 — The (social networking) trend started with the fatally successful Friendster, which became slow and unwieldy as the site’s traffic grew beyond its capacity. Friendster began losing its enthusiastic participants to Tribe.net, MySpace and other competing networking sites. These days, it would seem that MySpace has emerged the victor. Its appeal lies chiefly in the fact that users’ profile pages are highly customizable–video clips, music, custom backgrounds and fonts. MySpace admins are doing their best to enforce the site’s no-nudity rule. (It would seem to be a losing battle.) Reynoso gave up his personal MySpace profile when he began spending hours a day online. He now concentrates solely on his band page but there are still times when he gets sucked down the MySpace rabbit hole. “You see a good-looking girl, and you click on her pic. And then you see another good-looking girl on her friends list, and you click.” SACRAMENTO NEWS & REVIEW

Mark Brooks: MySpace reached the ultimate social connectors — musicians and DJs. Then they allowed them to express themselves musically and graphically on MySpace. Then they came from ‘left field’ and trumped Friendster.

YAHOO FINANCE — Dec 10 — DatingHeadshots launches a national photography service specializing in premium photography services for online personals users. Solves two predicaments many online daters face: 1) where to turn for quality, reasonably priced, professional digital photographs and 2) how to meet the rigorous photo specifications of the online dating companies. DatingHeadshots allows the client to choose two to four favorite photos from the 50+ photos taken during their photo shoot.

Mark Brooks: Online dating companies sell people to people. That’s the ‘product’ essentially. The better the product looks the better for business. My money is on LookBetterOnline. More established, good USA coverage, existing client base. I tried LBOL out recently for a shoot and was pleased.

CBS MARKETWATCH — Dec 9 — Intermix Media turns its star property, MySpace.com, into an independent subsidiary with fresh venture-capital backing. Intermix, which owns a number of Web properties, announced Wednesday that Redpoint Ventures invested $4 million. It's not disclosed how much Redpoint is investing in MySpace. If Friendster's $53 million valuation in fall 2003 is any guide, MySpace, with twice as many unique visitors than Friendster had when the social network site was valued, should be worth a lot more. 

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

Mark Brooks: MySpace has out Friendstered Friendster by empowering its users. In return, they love MySpace.

YAHOO — Dec 9 — GuessWhatiHeard.com allows people to talk about their ex-friends, flames, business associates, and classmates. In turn, this information can then be used by others when considering whether or not to date, befriend, or do business with them.  Kelly Felix, founder of GuessWhatiHeard.com, says he created the site after seeing and hearing from many people that most so-called "social networking" websites such as Friendster and MySpace are just plain boring, and that finding out what other people think of you and others is not only fun, but very useful.

Mark Brooks: Interesting idea.  Alas, missed the boat.  Yet another way to skin the social networking cat.

SEARCH ENGINE JOURNAL — Dec 9 — Friendster Search, powered by Eurekster, shows results ranked based on preferences of Friendster members and their friends. Friendster’s 13 million users can now access personalized Internet search results based on their interests and preferences and those of their friends. This new functionality uniquely informs Friendster users of “What’s Hot” among their network of friends, alerting them to new Web destinations and topics of interest. It continuously learns from the search behavior of Friendster users and their social networks. The technology links search algorithms to social networks and “remembers” the sites that users and their network of contacts have searched for and found useful, surfacing them to the top for future searches. SEARCHENGINEJOURNAL

Mark Brooks: I checked it out. Blindingly fast search results. I looked up 'ace club' and it pulled up my club ACE-CLUB and American Council on Exercise. Relevant, and what my network might well have searched for. Right column shows recent and popular searches from my network. Seems Scott Sassa is pulling things together nicely for Friendster, at last. What's next Scott? How about some cool deals with some major brands? Starbucks, Disney, Miramax? How about Friendster mixers/parties? What happened to the events calendar?