Valleywag
the chart
Posts Tagged “
Friendster
”
Social network popularity just like high school
"Like the popular kids, Facebook will end up living in a trailer — just down the gravel road from Friendster." [Details] (Photo by AP/Jack Plunkett)
the chart
valleyspeak
Social nerdwanking
Coined by R. Stevens in his webcomic Diesel Sweeties, "social nerdwanking" means lording your social-network superiority over others, which is secretly the only reason you bother with Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Orkut, and every other social network. Except your legitimate if fruitless use of Adult FriendFinder.
the chart
VC sponsors a social-network pissing contest
VC blogger Fred Wilson gives Google and Yahoo too much credit: He's taking their "Inbox 2.0" initiatives to turn Gmail and Yahoo Mail into social networks seriously. He 's put together a chart comparing the "social graphs" — we think he means "number of users" — of some popular social networks versus Microsoft's Hotmail and AIM.com. Wilson estimates that Yahoo and Google, which aren't actually on the chart, have about 250 million and 60 million users. Here's the chart. More »
deals
When Friendster could have bought Facebook
As a side note, a little known fact is that when I was at Friendster, I found a small company out of Harvard that we came very close to acquiring, a startup no one had heard of that time, a company named Thefacebook. I've been an admirer of Zuck and the facebook team for a long time now.
So says ex-Friendster executive and Bebo founder Jim Scheinman
in a self-aggrandizing interview with VentureBeat. Scheinman also takes credit for developing the "engagement marketing concept" — we think he means Facebook's new advertising platform. So, Jim, fess up. Why did the deal fall apart? How much did Mark Zuckerberg want? We suspect Scheinman won't tell us, so if you know anything more about Friendster's botched chance to stay relevant, fill us in.
facebook
Google Gang apologists demand a recount
Word is quickly spreading that Google's OpenSocial is more of a PR triumph than engineering feat. Even partners, such as Friendster, for example, want to make sure you know that they were developing their own developer platforms well before word leaked about Google's plans. On top of that, yesterday we showed you a series of charts indicating just how insignificant many of these Google gang members are in relation to Facebook. Google apologists did not appreciate the imagery. Show us the aggregates! They demanded. Fine. Here's a new chart. But it's just going to teach you to be careful what you wish for. More »
opensocial
Another minute, another Google Gang member
According to a source, blog-software company Six Apart has joined as another partner for Google's OpenSocial platform. For those of you keeping count at home, don't bother. The list is surely to grow as word gets out. Social network Friendster, for example, wasn't asked to join the Google Gang. The pioneering social network begged to be included after a story leaked on TechCrunch. Google's secrecy is making the whole "open" affair less than transparent, as different names leak to different reporters. Here's a list of media outlets and the OpenSocial partners they list. More »
"When you see anything working, follow it as far and as quickly as you can. Uhm, we didn't even get to that stage because we were having trouble following other technology." — Friendster CEO Kent Lindstrom, admitting that the once-pioneering social network he runs has trouble keeping up with competitors. The original Vator.tv video in which he made these comments has been yanked offline. Anyone keep a copy? Send it in. [Epicenter]
Forgotten social network Friendster surprisingly not dead, increases May pageviews by 40%. [VentureBeat]
Friendster, thought dead, sighted in Manila. [Wall Street Journal]
nyt
The Times just wants to party with the Web
The New York Times covered a lot of ground in writing about the net this weekend, but I noticed a weird trend: More »
myspace
What News Corp doesn't want you to know about MySpace: Condensed edition
After News Corp. threatened to sue his publisher if they published his expos on MySpace and its poster boy Tom Anderson (pictured), journalism student Trent Lapinski sold his story to Valleywag. Why did MySpace try to block a story that really tells us what we already knew? Who knows, but it's fun to publish it anyway and see if they sue. More »
friendster
It's aliiiive: Friendster gets $10 million
Board the windows! Get out your bat! Don't say the "zed" word! Friendster is back from the dead! More »
friendster
Caught between a rock and a Facebook: Friendster's dilemma
The game is over, and Friendster lost. More »
google
Morning news: The secret motives behind today's deals
- Google launches a tool to show advertisers when they're getting screwed by clickfraud. Will it give the same dire results that this independent tool gives? [BusinessWeek]
- Microsoft refuses to explain to its stockholders why it supports Net Neutrality, bringing us all one day closer to a shouting match where CEO Steve Ballmer screams, "Neutrality! Neutrality! Neutrality!" and bites the head off a bat. [Reuters]
- Microsoft also enters health care by buying Azyxxi. The real reason for that is to make its media player "Zune" sound less stupid in comparison. [NYT]
- Friendster weighs the benefits of suing its more successful competitors now that it theoretically owns a patent on lists of friends. (Microsoft is buying the patent on lists of enemies from the Nixon estate.) [WSJ]
- Kazaa, one of the many replacements for Napster, promises to sell out and go legit, since anybody who actually wants free music has moved to Limewire and BitTorrent. [WSJ]
microsoft
Remainders: Vista launches Thursday, doesn't say which Thursday
- Bill Gates says Vista will be ready in January. Unless it won't. [MSNBC]
- Boston thinks it has a hard time with wifi bedouins — cafe moochers who suck up table space and bandwidth without buying a thing. Child's play. In Boston, at least the cafes charge. San Franciscans demand free wifi — and then we figure one cup of coffee earns us a full day's rent. Hell, I'm writing this from Coffee to the People, where I've sat for the last five hours. Try that on for size, Boston. [Boston Globe]
- Old-school Netscape fans are calling the new version "New Coke." That's what AOL gets for saddling progressive exec Jason Calacanis with such a fuddy-duddy user base. [Read/WriteWeb]
- Friendster's patent looks familiar, says the entrepreneur who filed a similar social networking patent five years before Friendster launched. [Boing Boing]
- Can Google do anything without pretending it just saved the world? Business 2.0's bloggers note that Google's new HQ in Michigan isn't a philanthropic effort. Google may spin it as "a shot in the arm" for Michigan's lackluster job market. But don't expect it to pay wages like it does in Silicon Valley — Michigan college grads cost just $47,000 a pop. [Business 2.0]
friendster
Friendster's founder just copied a friend
Friendster inventor Jonathan Abrams ripped off a pal's business networking idea and slapped a dating model on it, according to Sean Ness. Sean tells major blog Boing Boing: More »
friendster
Friendster might actually find a buyer now that it's won a patent for social networks. The Red Herring reports that the patent is broad enough to cover activity on several other sites. Friendster's president won't say how aggressively his company will bully its competitors into buying licenses.
More »
Friendster patents social networking
Friendster might actually find a buyer now that it's won a patent for social networks. The Red Herring reports that the patent is broad enough to cover activity on several other sites. Friendster's president won't say how aggressively his company will bully its competitors into buying licenses.
More »
