Ning’s Andreessen: Zuckerberg Friend? Facebook Foe!
By DONNA BOGATIN • May 6th, 2008 • Category: BIG PICTUREWhile Ms. Kara Boom Swisher hails the golden geek “news” she has “broken” (or perhaps even “suggested,” as she suggests!), while chatting with the proverbial “several sources with knowledge of the situation,” she may have neglected to do all of her background research on the situation, Ning’s Marc Andreessen situation,vs. a vs. Facebook.
Ning’s recently pocketed $60 million funding check for building out more 60 second “social networks” for the masses may not have yet cleared, but all signals indicate Andreessen is already plotting out a Ning cashing in, forecasting a very festive New Years Eve 2010 indeed!
Andreessen spilled all for a very cooperative Fast Company backslap that coincidentally coincided with recent the Ning funding announcement.
Fellow quick flipping enthusiast, Union Square Venture’s Fred Wilson, high-fived Andreessen’s “viral loop” theory for Fast Company, while his portfolio investment Twitter–a Andreessen angel investment as well–was at the same time falling victim to those pesky “viral” scalability issues.
SEE “Ning, Twitter Viral VC Ventures: Startup Loops That Kill.”
Moreover, I “suggested” that Andreessen’s $60 million war chest would come in handy for a Facebook “strategy.”
SEE: “Ning: $60 million VC for Facebook Fight: AdSense Optional”
What IS the Andreessen-Gina Bianchini Facebook plan of attack?
Fast Company’s Adam Penenberg not only put Andreessen-Bianchi on a golden pedestal, he (unconvincingly) derided competitor young upstart Mark Zuckerberg as well, in favor of Ning:
Facebook got hammered when it tried to retrofit itself with a new ad-driven scheme called Beacon, which passed customer information on to more than 40 participating Web sites such as Blockbuster and Fandango — and alerted users’ Facebook friends about their purchases on those sites. To Facebook, it was harnessing the power of word-of-mouth advertising. To many Facebookers, it felt like a creepy intrusion. After apologizing, the company improved its opt-in/opt-out mechanism.
But Ning doesn’t face that risk.
Bianchini on how the “impregnable” Ning trumps Facebook, thanks to its “viral” 60 second social networking scalable machine:
It would be very difficult for MySpace or Facebook to shift gears and directly offer a competing service to us,” says Bianchini. “They have a huge set of technical challenges just scaling what they’re already doing, and we have spent three years building a serious architecture and technology lead for what we do.” She says one of her engineers compared that kind of course correction with “swapping out the engine of a 747 during midflight.”
WOW! Who says Google gets ALL the rocket scientists?
Marc Andreessen has set his Ning up for for an interesting set of Facebook strategies: BEAT Facebook, HELP Mark Zuckerberg, or BE GOBBLED UP BY FACEBOOK!
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DONNA BOGATIN is the Founder & CEO of STARTUP ALPHA
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