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Friendster Not Dead: Gets New CEO, $20 Million

missed the boat.jpgIs Friendster a cautionary tale? Or a company making the most of its second chance? IDG Ventures, which is investing $20 million into the original social network, thinks the latter. So does Google vet Richard Kimber, who is joining as CEO.

The Friendster story is ancient history by the ADD standards of the Web 2.0 world, but still instructive: The six-year-old company once had the same kind of heat that MySpace and Facebook eventually generated, but could never capitalize on it. Long-forgotten by most people in the U.S., it stumbled into a second act as an Asia play. MySpace and Facebook are just now trying to make headway in the very markets Friendster now thrives in.

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So does that mean Friendster will be toast again, once its bigger rivals get their acts together? Not necessarily. Here's the case for Friendster, via Meez CEO Sean Ryan:

Friendster is a top 15 web site in the world (that's the whole world, not just Northern California). It gets over 30M unique visitors a month and more than 10M daily visits - those are extraordinary numbers. Its users are clustered primarily in a contiguous region (Southest Asia) whose GDP and populations are increasing quickly and which is relatively US-recession proof. Oh yeah, the site is growing rapidly.

Once you hear those facts, you have to make a couple leaps of faith. First you must forget that Friendster was once the hottest and arguably first social media network in the US since that is no longer relevant, but most Silicon Valley people can't seem to forget that missed opportunity - now they have a different team, different investors and mostly different site. For a somewhat harsh view of the company's earlier trajectory, see this INC Magazine article. And then you must agree that there are countries outside the regions of Northern California, Western Europe, China and India that matter, and in fact, matter a lot - that's as hard for my peers to believe as it is that there might be great companies in the US Midwest.

See Also: Web 2.0 CEO: I'm A Friendster Fan, And Proud Of It

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