http://www.tech...closes-f…...

If those question marks were meant for me, I was quoting #16, rob j.

Obviously there are many such sites. The point is that when a VC (or any investor) dumps $3-20 million into a new site or service it isn’t enough for it to simply survive. Some of these sites will be around for a while, but the vast bulk of the market will be owned by a small handful, just as it is with online BOOK sellers, and yes, search engines too.

If someone wants to bootstrap a service and make it profitable more power to them. If we are looking at another 1997-2000 when over $1 Trillion of wealth was blown on garbage almost indistuinuguishable from 90% of what is covered on this site… forget it. Burn your own money.

Your right. There aren’t. There are MORE than 50 auction sites, many more than 75 online retailers, and plenty more than 20 search engines. They may not all be as successful as the mainstays you pointed out, but even achieving 1% of amazon’s business gives you a significant market share.

As a long time user of Myspace, I quickly became tired with the ‘all looks – no substance’ format that appeals to so many.

Multiply, simply put, has the tools to succeed. For starters, one can host their images, videos, and mp3s without having to go to a third party site. I lost a hard drive and was thrilled to find I had posted some of my favorite pictures on Multiply years ago (and they were still there in high resolution!). It’s incredibly cleaner than the BBS-like chaos found on myspace often, and to reiterate what others have said… it’s networking for grown-ups.

It was innovative (in a business sense) when it counted: 3 years ago. It doesn’t have to be particularly innovative now since it has already won the battle. Innovation is a relatively minor factor. The “network effect” which comes with a huge user base is vastly more important than this or that nifty Ajax feature.

I agree with Kayt, once the current generation of MySpace users mature and start looking for something more powerful they will most likely migrate across to Multiply.

I think that Multiply has stumbled upon something incredibly powerful — the technological facilitation of real relationships in a world where very few folks stay put for very long. It has incredible value for people who aren’t looking to meet strangers, but rather want a more robust way to communicate with their family and friends. I dig it, and I think as soon as the current generation of MySpace users finds that random web interactions have lost their shine, they’ll be making their way over to Multiply as well.

I think Myspace was really innovative in their grass roots marketing approach. That’s where a lot of the new social networks need to take pointers from. There should be less of a focus on acquiring venture capital and more emphasis on growing and building an active and lively community.

What does the future of social networks hold? Ask the generation that grew up on it!

Stay tuned….

D’uh. It is a bubble and the winner–MySpace–has already been declared! What do people not understand about this? There aren’t 50 eBay’s, 75 Amazon’s or 20 Googles. There is a very limited number of slots available in each niche. MySpace and perhaps 2-3 others will survive long term. For everyone else: just because you play mad hoops in high school doesn’t mean you’ll make it to the NBA.

As for the VC guys, they’ll lose on almost every one of these but the chance of hitting the next big phenom makes it worth it to them. Too bad the stupider ones are still wasting money on a niche which is ALREADY SETTLED.

The smart VCs are looking at what will be hot in 2009. The ones who pick well will be rich. The rest will be shmoes.

however, i have a question for you: has any of you actually used Multiply before?

i’m not trying to say anything, but it just seems to me that, from some of your comments, you know very little about the service.

Multiply, a popular social network which launched back in March 2004, has raised a Series A funding round. The round consists of $5 million from Transcosmos and $1 million from the company founders. Multiply is approaching 3 million users and has …

Marc Canter’s PeopleAggregator is actually the best example of how the next generation of “distributed” social networks will co-exist. I will control my profile and mange by permission who and where it is seen. The ame goes fro my reviews, post, comments etc.

This is beginning to feel like a bubble. VC’s are chasing anything with a social network structure in the hope of striking it rich with another MySpace. Instead they should be focusing on infrastructure companies like Azul, MetaSearch Engines like Technorati or P2P Video distribution like RawFlow.

I would love TechCrunch to plot the number of companies by segment on a chart. I wonder how many social “JAIL” networks would therebe and what percentage of the overall invesment market have they consumed.

Multiply may possibly be the best of the lot but there are alot and some will just have to go if not all of them in the end.

When you signed up for Multiply, where you presented with the headshots of random people? Did you see content from total strangers? Did you find a search form where you could find women, 19-30 years old, within X miles of your zip code? No, you didn’t. The reason is that Multiply is more about leveraging your real-world personal network for the purposes of sharing photos, video, blogs, etc.

What makes Multiply a special form of communication is that it gives you a larger, yet very relevant audience for your posts. That is, the people who have some sort of connection to you and might actually care about what you’re sharing. This focus is reflected not just in the lack of voyeuristic features mentioned above, but also in the defined relationships you have with your contacts (i.e., no generic “contacts” or “friends” here….people are your mother, roommate, colleague, cousin, etc.).

The key example of this differentiation though is the fact that the Explore page (message board) is the heart of the product, and not user profiles. The message board represents everything thats going on in the lives of the people in your life, and the marriage of content with a message thread facilitates ongoing discussion amongst all of these people centered around your posts (and theirs).

There simply isn’t a more engaging way to share your life with your friends and family.

Also, as for us being a YASN (yet another social network), to the extent we are one, we’ve been around a lot longer then most of the newcomers to this space.