So TheDeal now finds out that Friendster‘s sale process has ended, which coincides with what I heard last week from some of the potential bidders as well, about KPCB actually feeling bullish now about Friendster’s survival prospects, whatever those are. The sentiment on the social networking pioneer’s sale has swung from one end to another, with surprising alacrity: there was a time couple of months ago when the investors would have done anything to get rid of the lemon, and now, according to my sources, they are saying no to offers from at least 6-7 bidding parties. Apparently, Friendster has been making a small come back, in terms of the number of users, after falling off the map with competitors like MySpace, and KPCB and others think it might be worth to stick around for a while. New money has been pumped in, as we reported earlier last month…
Anyway, back to this Deal story: Montgomery & Co., the investment bank on the deal, has officially ended the sale process..the asking price, as of about two months ago, was close to $10 million, but some buyers balked at the $6 million in debt tag.
In September Friendster launched its latest social networking application, Friendster 2.0, which emulated features offered by competitors such as MySpace. The upgrade has at least stanched the bleeding. According to comScore Media Metrix, as of March, Friendster had 1.1 million unique site visitors in the U.S., up 9% from 975,000 visitors in March 2005.
What will be the result in another 2-3 months? We’ll let you know…
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