SAN FRANCISCO, 5:36 PM, FRI MAY 16 | 36 POSTS IN THE LAST 24 HOURS | tips@valleywag.com | SUBMIT A TIP | RSS
« next »

Sky Dayton just wants to be your friend

Sky DaytonCAMBRIDGE, MASS. — Could it be that Sky Dayton is feeling a little lonely? EarthLink, the company he founded, refused to participate in the latest round of financing for Helio, the upstart wireless carrier he now heads. In a keynote speech at Technology Review's EmTech conference, he touted his company's service not as, say, letting you make calls and surf the Web, but "connecting you to your community of friends." So it's a social network! Ah, but a social network that requires buying a phone (as much as $295) and signing up for service ($85 to $90 a month, on average). No wonder Dayton's ersatz social network, cleverly disguised as a cell-phone company, only counts 140,000 users, and is losing hundreds of millions of dollars. Somehow I don't think Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is sweating over this one.

6:14 AM on Thu Sep 27 2007
By Owen Thomas
324 views
1 comment

Comments

  • Image of ResearchZilla ResearchZilla at 07:22 AM on 09/27/07
    Reply by Email

    you know, i'm also really upset by how his company markets to teens - the pricing is ridiculous in the states and no teen (working or not) can touch their package pricing offerings (text, im, web and phone)...worse than even virgin prepaid, which i thought was the worst when i check it out...

    go back to korea with this mr dayton....it ain't ripe for the states..

Start a discussion:

Reply by Email

Login with your username and password below. Or comment on this post via email.