FC NOW: The Fast Company Weblog
October 30, 2003
Deja Vu All Over Again?
The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that Friendster, the wildly popular social networking site that's a people version of Napster (that's right, post your friends on the Web and pass them around), snagged a $13 million investment led by... guess who? Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers! Yes, the same firm that all but fueled the 1990s boom.
The Journal goes on to report that it's not just Friendster that has secured funding. Similar operations (dare we call them that?) like LinkedIn, Tribe Networks, Meetup, Emode, and Ryze have also met with funding good fortunes.
Why are all these places attracting investments? No, not because their revenues are zooming up. It's because they're getting lots of traffic. (Doesn't that sound eerily familiar?)
So what the hell is going on here? Are we starting to fill another bubble up with air? Or have we wiped the slate clean of old worthless dot-coms, allowing bold, innovative, new competitors to emerge?
Posted by Ryan Underwood at October 30, 2003 10:11 AM | Category: business development |
1 Comment
ADVERTISEMENT
FC NOW MENU
NEWSLETTERS
FC NOW CATEGORIES
FC READS
Could it be that such social networking sites are attracting funding because they are not expensive to operate, and as people always look for a place to meet, this means big potential revenues in a market without a clear leader? It's a huge potential market like e-bay.com for ads or monster.com for jobs.