Friendster, MySpace and Bertelsmann

Today the New York Times has published a story about Friendster’s failure to be THE social networking site of today. It is an interesting story about a founder who just turned down Google’s offer of $30 million in 2003 because renowned venture capitalists told him. And because both sides thought to make it really big. Big heads. As we all know Friendster cannot compete with the market leader MySpace anymore.
So what started as a typical start up story and became a famous site for quite some time, is now in danger of lapsing into insignificance.

Yesterday the online edition of German magazine Der Spiegel reported that Bertelsmann are planning to launch a community platform like MySpace. It will be interesting to see how one of the biggest media companies in the world approaches this new territory. I am very sceptic to say the least since they want to start it from scratch and as far as I know they have no experience in this field.

And what will be the contents of that site? I fear a new channel for advertisement of their own products and companies. Besides other companies Bertelsmann own 90% of the RTL Group, 100% of Random House and 50% of SonyBMG.

But maybe all will be fine.

Friendster story via TechCrunch