Friendster Finds No Love

Filed in archive Business on May 8, 2006

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. I'm working on Mooble 2.0; a new focus and community design.