Friendster Back from the Dead?

garzpacho writes "With a fresh infusion of $10 million in funding, Friendster is making a bid to rejoin the social networking A-list. The cash, from VC firm DAG Ventures, accompanies plans for a complete project redesign, a focus on adult users and a newly awarded patent for social networking. A real comeback might be unlikely, though: 'Turnaround stories for companies that draw on advanced Web technology known collectively as Web 2.0 remain unprecedented, says David Sze, a general partner at Greylock who specializes in consumer Internet companies but does not invest in Friendster. Still, Sze says Friendster doesn't need to have a MySpace-size traffic explosion to turn a profit. Says Sze in an e-mail, 'If those users are reasonably valuable and monetizable, I think [investors] can make money on their investment.''"

Comments

Windows 3.1 making a comeback as well

[xintegerx]

Why buy Windows every year when you can buy Windows 3.1 on eBay for the cheap? It has everything except DirectX for games, or the ability to run .NET and Office 2003 applications, but so does Linux.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBNBQRXvkps

(This is a joke)

Between the lines:

[theCat]

"With our patent on social networking, we really don't need traffic at all. Maybe just enough to have a claim to *be* a valid site so that we can extort... erm... exercise our patent rights with actual... erm... other social networks that have beat us to the... erm... violated our intellectual property at the expense of our feckless... erm... creative leadership."

How long until?

[shr3k]

How long until we have a repeat of the IM wars? One network is going to want to be compatible with another network, but can't because that network won't open up its protocols. One network might even join forces and share compatibility with other networks (e.g., Friendster, Facebook) to take on one giant, established network (Myspace).

Hopefully, someone will come out with some kind of meta-network that lets me join each network and keeps up-to-date a basic compatibility (e.g., like GAIM and Trillian do for IM).

Re:Blah.

[Red Flayer]

If I get hold of a once-marketable name, slap some "Web 2.0" style buzzwords on it, and do some patent-trolling, can I have $10 million in venture capital too?

Yes. Yes you can. In the last version it was all ".com" and "web" and "online." Now it's Web 2.0. There's a sucker born every minute, and apparently some of those suckers are too young to remember the 90s.