Friendster Coverage in New York Times – A Tale of Two Articles

Alright, time to get this blog back in action! Yes, I know I’ve said that before, but now I’m back and recharged after a great few days in Cabo for a beautiful wedding. 

So far almost all of my posts here have been about email, but I also promised to write about the business of startups.  I have plenty of tales from both the VC-funded and bootstrapped startup worlds, so there’s no shortage of stuff to write about.  As a first item, here’s a comparison I think will be eye-opening for many people who are not directly involved in this industry.

TechCrunch and other blogs have covered the Oct 15 ’06 NYT "tell-all" article on Friendster.  It’s a tale not very surprising to many of us out here in the Bay Area.  But what I find more interesting than the article itself is comparing it to the Jan ’05 NYT article on Friendster – from the same author in the same publication about the same company, just a year and a half earlier, but well past the time many of the events in the second article took place.  This is a common example of how stories of VC-funded startups are often marketed and spun, it’s rare to be able to compare stories like this side-by-side though.

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