Oh boy. Jonathan Abrams has landed some money. I'm sure his investors will do very well.
But the heaviest thing about this article is that Abrams is now threatening to sue over patents he claims to have. I wonder if anyone has ever told Jonathan about SixDegrees and prior art?
One good thing though. Jonathan is now talking about charging for "premium" services, rather than for base service. He claims he won't charge anyone for signing up. Now the question is "what are those premium services?" and how much will he charge?
Well maybe we'll all find out on Sept. 16th at VLab's Social Networking: Is there Really a Business Model? Be there or be square. I know Clay Shirky thinks these are a waste of time - but I think it's significant that end-users would protest 'what they feel are' bad policies.
Meanwhile the Tribe.net is rocking - growing exponentially with lots of new Tribes being formed everyday. Tribe.net is not only going to give Friendster a run for it's money, but they're also going to give all these "premium" services away for free. Their business model is based upon their "Listings' service. They're going after the Monstor.com and Craigslist dollars, not Match.com's - like Friendster. And when you look at HotorNot, what Pud's been up to, ODDPost, LiveJournal , MeetUp and Typepad - I'd say that things are heating up around here. Real money is being made out there.
I actually like Tribe.net the best - even if I DIDN'T have something to do with helping them out. Oh. BTW I'm a paid consultant of Tribe.net. And proud of it. Their system makes Friendster look very plain Jane. And they're just starting. Tribe.net is gonna kick ass - some serious bootey.
Here's the News.com article on Friendster's funding......
Friendster: A little cash goes a long way?. The increasingly popular personal networking site collects a million dollars from veterans of Amazon, PayPal and Yahoo in hopes of turning a shoestring operation into the Web's next big thing. [CNET News.com - Media]
