Dave,

That's a good question but the answer is quite simple.

The reason is this: Just as Ryze began to flourish and grow, Adrian Scott, the Tsar of Ryze, began to arbitrarily reprimand and then ban and boot off his biggest users and most prolific posters. And I noticed that he primarily did this by arbitrarily and capriciously applying the Ryze "Terms of Service" to those of one political persuasion while turning a blind eye to the activities and transgressions of those of another political persuasion. The political persuasion is irrelevant but his 'control freakish' this is 'my website' attitude is the issue.

Myspace, on the other hand, let things flourish and grow 'naturally'. I'm not saying that Adrian should never have pruned or maintained the network but his aggressive and grossly unfair handling of affairs and user interactions on Ryze led it to the sorry state it is today. Where the biggest discourse is now how MLMer's can sell DingleBerry Juice (or whatever flavor of the month is popular) to their 'Downline'.

And I can only tell you how I and other former Ryzers laughed our behinds off to see this occur and it's exactly as we envisioned it happening!

Hope Adrian enjoys Panama or wherever he is slumming these days.

- SVJ

SillyconValley-James

"Ryze Limited has not been acquired by Nokia. While we are approached by companies with business proposals on a regular basis, our focus right now is building our team in our new facility in Panama, so we can improve the service we provide to our members."

ScottAllen

i was playing around with Ryze for quite a bit of time (along with several thousand other folks) before Jonathan Abrams started Friendster.

in fact, Jonathan approached several of us who were running some of the larger networking groups on Ryze for feedback when he was thinking about getting Friendster started.

(several folks have also suggested that Jonathan got several initial ideas for Friendster from what Ryze was or wasn't doing right)

probably an interesting discussion on why Ryze didn't become Friendster / MySpace. very well could have been.

DaveMcClure500Hats

Jeremy