Sassaing Up Friendster

Former NBC president Scott Sassa is now CEO of Friendster. The Hollywood Reporter writes that his main job will be "building the online success of Friendster into a profitable business by expanding its services and user base." Yeah, like, fixing those damn servers! Sassa himself said, "The Internet and digital technology are turning the entertainment business upside down. Friendster's mass appeal, viral growth and stickiness will make it one of the brands that will redefine the media landscape." Blah blah blah. Gothamist takes an interest in Scott Sassa because, while he did agree to produce Freaks and Geeks, his reign as West Coast entertainment president included a lot of crapalicious fare (as this 2000 Time article by James Poniewozik notes) and he did let Jeff Zucker greenlight Emeril.

Sassa worked for Ted Turner, so he's certainly familiar with manic personalities that will be Friendstering him now - he's user 6,724,953! And just out of curiosity, how many people out there check Friendster on a daily basis? These days, Gothamist seems to use it to see if the random, unwitting names du jour, like the girl who crapped her pants at the Fox upfront, are on Friendster.

Gothamist on writing Friendster messages.

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By Jen Chung in Arts and Events on June 3, 2004 9:50 AM

Comments [rss]

Sam

I have known people who...

-found a job

-sold something, bought something (via bulletinboard)

-found a date

-found a roomate

on friendster. I can assume the money into Friendster won't be made back with just an advertisting model. But even if it was....don't we all know a certain company who just raised billions with nothing but an advertising model ? :)

SPone

I only use friendster to get ideas about movies books and music

Frank Ruscica

The idea is to leverage the socnet demographic (so-called 'young tech elites') to run marketing as a profit center, a la NBC's The Apprentice, NBC's The Restaurant, etc.,

Of course, the 'Better MySpace TV' group at MySpace already knew this...

http://profile.myspace.com/users/3748393

Nichelle

I defected from Friendster and now I'm on orkut, but really I keep with friends through email and blogs and I look up random folks with google.

John Carl

Friendster is STILL torturously slow...they should have spent the money improving that instead of this guy's salary.

How in hell are they expecting to monetize this service? Just an advertising model? Friendster = Napster (i.e. created the buzz but no $$ payoff)

Meetup.com showed more protential but no one has talked about them since Dean dropped out of the race.