I have written quite a bit about social networking monetization in the past. I therefore felt compelled to read (and comment) on this Engadget post: Friendster the Movie - Starring Topher Grace and cameraphones. Much has been written about the rise and fall of Friendster, and I recommend the recent post of buddy Bill Burnham on the subject Earth to Friendster: We Have A Problem.
Last February KP's John Doerr, a Friendster investor and director (with an otherwise hyper-impressive track record - can't always be right in VC, it is part of the game), said that "said they would announce a partnership deal in February and reach profitability within the next 90 days". March saw the launch of Friendster Blogs, a while-labeled version of TypePad, which features a free entry level offering and the usual TypePad three-tier premium memberships. Both companies have done a good job at designing a compelling free service that might draw users away from blogger, but it is not clear how much conversion they will get. Then comes the Movie "deal". With ex-TV wunderkid Scott Sassa as CEO, this could be expected - that or a reality show. Hmmm....
Sustaining their audience in providing a rich and useful "value experience" is Friendster's challenge, one which MySpace seems to be executing on much better (comScore ranked it the 7th largest Web domain in page views, at 4.6B). Their core focus: music and entertainment, and a community of tens of thousands of bands and artists, attracting 9M unique visitors and 65,000 new daily registrations.
Social networking is now "just" part of the fabric of online services: LinkedIn focusing squarely on the job market, MySpace on music and entertainment, Tribe.net (reportedly raising their Series B) on classifieds,...
Update: SiliconBeat reports the launch of a Friendster classifieds web site in Manilla. Sounds like they will be trying to slice and dice their 15 million members in chunks that they can target and monetize through these kinds of products/services.
In the same vein, Plaxo just announced the launch of additional premium services, aiming at tripling their user base to 15M and bringing their arpu from $1 to $2 (Bambi Francisco interview here).
Comments