Google's social network, Google+, is late. Facebook has a big lead, having ousted MySpace, which in turn deposed Friendster, the site that started us all on this path towards recreating our social fabric as a network of connected personal nodes.
Groupon is believed to be the fastest growing startup in history, zooming in less than three years from nothing to a staff of 6,000 and annual sales that will reportedly top $3 billion this year.
This is the way social networks end: Not with a bang, but a "pivot."
Rapleaf knows your name, your age and where you live. It knows your e-mail address, your income and what social networks you use. It knows your likes and dislikes. And it makes money by selling much of that personal information to advertisers.
An apple fell on Isaac Newton. Electricity struck Benjamin Franklin.
I have a mission for you. One so lofty, so arduous, so utterly impossible that many of you may abandon the cause.
Facebook is primed to announce this week that it's amassed a half billion active friends, a milestone reinforcing its status as the king of social networks -- a company to be regarded with the seriousness and power (if not revenue) of Google, Apple, Yahoo and Microsoft.
Do you remember Bebo? AOL bought the hot social networking Web site for $850 million in 2008. This week, the company threw in the towel -- Bebo will either be sold or shut down in 2010, according to an internal memo.
A few nights ago Yulinar (full name withheld), a 23-year-old insurance agent in Indonesia's capital city of Jakarta, was in bed doing her usual ritual before falling asleep: updating her Facebook status and checking her friends' updates.
With all the MySpaces and Facebooks and Twitters and so forth out there but only so many hours in the day with which to waste on them, what social networks are the best ones to join?
With the U.S. economy apparently getting ready to take one of its cyclical snoozes, employers are more hesitant to take on new hires than they were even just three or four months ago - and the recent uptick in unemployment means more competition for each opening. That doesn't mean you need to give up on the idea of looking for a new job. In fact, if your company is going through a merger or seems likely to announce layoffs, your best bet may be to start your job search right away.
The social networking site lost out to MySpace and Facebook in the U.S., but it's found a new life across the Pacific
Been poked by anyone recently? Or maybe you've been turned into a zombie, or perhaps you've added Scrabulous to your applications?
MySpace and Facebook may dominate the U.S. market, but across the world, a social-networking land grab is underway. A slew of also-rans in the U.S. have attracted some unlikely followings. In Brazil, everyone's on Orkut. In Peru, it's Hi5.com. Philippines: Friendster. The U.K.: Bebo, the hottest site in all the world (that doesn't end in -ace or -ook).
It can't be said too often, because so few people even still understand its gravity: The adoption of technology in the developing world is tech's biggest trend. A new report by Forrester Research predicts there will be 2.25 billion PCs in the world by 2015, up from 755 million today. The vast majority of that growth will come in places like China, India, Brazil and Eastern Europe.
Photobucket is the most important site on the Internet that hardly anybody understands. Unpretentiously, it has built an essential service that didn't need to shout out for attention, the way MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, or other related sites have. Yet it's built an audience of 38 million members, a figure now growing more than 80,000 per day. That's up from just 50,000 members at the end of 2003.
Friendster, the social networking site that helped introduce the service to the online world, is expected to announce today a $10 million round of venture capital funding, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Web 2.0 may be a buzz word, but it's still attracting big bucks.
News Corp. executive Ross Levinsohn hadn't even heard of MySpace until he interviewed a 20-something woman who was applying for an entry-level administrative position with him back in 2004.
FREQUENT FLIERS OF THE world, unite! Or at least get to know each other, says Peter Shankman, a publicist/entrepreneur who flies more than 150,000 miles a year. Shankman says he's tired of "sitting...
Initially considered the last resort for the socially stunted, online dating has shrugged off its social stigma and emerged as a mainstream means for singles to find that special someone.
MySpace isn't the only startup to turn a Gen Y-based network into a moneymaking business. Mark Zuckerberg, a computer science major at Harvard, last year created a Web version of the freshman faceb...
Of the scores of social-networking websites born since Friendster's triumphal launch in 2002, name one that's in the black. Stumped? Insiders say that not only is privately held, Santa Monica-based...
Add blogging to the list of extracurricular activities in need of some protection.
FSB: Crowd Controlupdated: Fri Apr 01 2005 00:01:00
You mean you don't know Auren Hoffman? Well, get to know him--it will cost you somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000 a month--and pretty soon you'll be wondering how you made new contacts and manage...
Business 2.0: He's No Angelupdated: Sat Jan 01 2005 00:01:00
Ram Shriram is by nature a cheerful, easygoing guy, but if you want to get him a little miffed, just call him an angel investor. That's the mistake I made recently, when I cruised down to Silicon V...
JONATHAN SCHWARTZ, PRESIDENT AND COO of Sun Microsystems, has recently criticized statements by Intel executives, mused that IBM might buy Novell, and complained about a CNET.com article--all by wr...
When Scott Sassa was approached about taking over the social networking website Friendster, his reaction was typical of someone from the off-line world: "I'm not really interested in running a dati...
If you can't be an innovator, why not be a copycat? Mark Pincus, a 37-year-old Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur, has made a career out of riding the wake of hot technology trends. His first three...
Late last year, when I drove down from San Francisco to Silicon Valley to pay a visit to Jonathan Abrams, I assumed I was about to have an argument on my hands. All over the Valley, the buzz around...
FSB: You Had a Friendupdated: Mon Mar 01 2004 00:01:00
If you are at all like me--and I can find that out simply by reviewing your online profile at Friendster, LinkedIn, Tribe, or some other social-networking startup--you're probably beginning to regr...
Fortune: Face Offupdated: Mon Feb 23 2004 00:01:00
First there was Friendster, the instantly hot web destination for those in search of love, friendship, or job contacts. Several imitators followed, and late last month Google jumped in the game, qu...
Imagine walking into a bar and asking 20 potential dates for their personal stats, and without thinking twice, they hand over the information. Five minutes later, you've discovered that 15 of them aren't worth your time. But 5 sure are.
Sure, you could decide whom to vote for by listening to the candidates speak and reading their position papers, but wouldn't it be easier if there were armies of political-science majors who did all the sorting and thinking for you?
In the beginning, there was the Oracle of Bacon. A playful website created by grad students at the University of Virginia in 1996, the site showed how Kevin Bacon's relationships with other actors ...
Joichi Ito, a venture capitalist in Tokyo, knows just about everybody in tech. That's good for business, but it also means others are constantly approaching him to broker connections around the wor...
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