Startup Chatter by Donna Bogatin

Plaxo to Comcast for (rumored) approximately $150 million. Where have all the VC backed billion dollar opportunities gone?

Disqus, for example. VC, cum blogger, Fred Wilson has been on a blogging roll for his Union Square Ventures portfolio investment, stealing PR thunder from the Disqus team itself. “Three reasons to use Disqus” and “Disqus and Seesmic pair up for video comments” Wilson’s A VC has headlined since the weekend.

Seesmic and Disqus are indeed a pair: Of niche, add-on, low economic value, specialty feature plays!

Wilson believes Google’s Ning-killing Friend Connect is the Googleplex’s “answer” to Yahoo’s MyBlogLog. The low-price point Yahoo acquisition, however, is hardly the stuff Google’s billion dollar market opportunity aspirations are made of.

SEE: Google Friend Connect Rains on Ning $500 million Social Network Parade  

What about “third party comment system” Disqus? Is there a billion dollar opportunity to be had by “unlocking comments from blogs” so as to supposedly “bring them into the mainstream.” Unlikely. Wilson acknowledges a “problem“ with blog comments: “most people don’t read them.” Most people don’t write them as well! Disqus to the billion dollar VC portfolio rescue?

NO! The ramen-noodle supported Ycombinator cool app may be a lightly funded “early stage” Web services play, but aren’t VC annointed seedlings supposed to grow into the “early stage” and ultimately yield “great growth”? According to Plaxo VC investor Sequoia they are.

With an estimated $30 million in VC funding, however, the Plaxo “exit” is a respectable one, but not an extraordinarily inspiring home run. Disqus and Seesmic will be lucky if they even achieve such benchmark liquidity metrics.

Gleefully without business models and nonchalantly dependent on a narrow and fickle user base, the core Disqus and Seesmic competitive advantages are the self-interested hype that its own investors readily produce.

SEE: TechCrunch Effect: Even Arrington’s Seesmic Can’t Escape It

GOT A STARTUP?  PITCH YOUR VENTURE HERE FREE AT THE STARTUP APLPHA FREE PITCH COMMUNITY! 

PLUS, FREE SILICON ALLEY BOOTSTRAP FINANCE STRATEGY SEMINAR: HOW TO LAUNCH YOUR TECH STARTUP FOR $198