By
Nick Denton,
2:07 PM on Tue Jun 5 2007,
2,388 views

To be sure, Jonathan Abrams needs all the publicity for Socializr that he can get. The new venture — which competes against the veteran of invitation services, Evite, and social networks such as Facebook — launched in
March, and hasn't yet caught fire. But Abrams will still be haunted by his last startup, Friendster, which threw away a huge early lead in social networks because the site became a byword for sluggishness. And, as Abrams has discovered again this month, that's all that profile writers really care about.
Gary Rivlin of the New York Times, last October, wrote
the definitive story of Friendster's failure; now Inc magazine follows up with a
cover story. Nice picture of Abrams, looking way more Inc-like than usual, but then there's the cover line: Great Idea Gone Wrong. Abrams really should have known better: nobody really wants the tale of the Friendster founder's resurgence, yet. Before giving any more in-depth interviews, best to wait till the story moves on.