Social Networking Forum

[yorktown]

An another note, one of the largest Dating Sites, JDate.com is for sale

Reprinted courtesy of the New York Times

Social Net Site Is Said to Be for Sale

By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
Published: January 3, 2008

Plaxo, an early social networking site that helps people keep their address books updated, is up for auction, people briefed on the offering said Wednesday night. The company, which has not made a profit, is seeking as much as $100 million, these people said.

Plaxo, which has been overtaken by rivals like Linked In and Facebook, has tried to reinvent itself as an aggregate of information from other social networking sites.

In October, the company started Plaxo Pulse, a service that collects information from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg and others, moving away from Plaxo?s original mission simply to keep electronic address books up-to-date. Indeed, Plaxo?s core business stirred some controversy because it sent out millions of e-mail messages on behalf of its users, creating the impression that the company was distributing spam.

The site then faced additional difficulties because some service providers stopped allowing Plaxo to use their services. Plaxo says it has 15 million registered users.

Plaxo was founded in 2001 by Todd Masonis along with a fellow Stanford engineering student, Cameron Ring, and Sean Parker, who was also a founder of Napster, the music downloading site.

The company has received more than $20 million in financing from venture capital firms like Sequoia Capital, an early investor in Google, as well as Globespan Capital Partners, Harbinger Venture Management and Cisco Systems. Some individual investors, like Ram Shriram, a member of Google?s board, and Timothy A. Koogle, a former vice chairman of Yahoo, have also provided financing.

Plaxo has hired Revolution Partners, a specialty investment bank, to handle the auction, these people said Wednesday.

[yorktown]

I have always been suspicious of Plaxo\'s business model. For that reason, I never entered my emails or engaged in their program.

Here is a company that, simply put, collects names and emails. The owners emphatically claim they don\'t sell the lists. While I currently believe that, I can not over the long term believe they will not.

My reasons are simple:

What else could be their business model other than to sell the list?

Something has to pay for their business, and charity can only last for so long.

Since this is not their business model, the new owners must consider this as a realistic option to obtain back their investment.

Marc Lesnick
Conference Organizer
Social Networking Conference