Photo Caption: In his Friendster days, Jonathan Abrams (right) worked closely with Mark Brooks (center) and Steve Kingsley-Jones.
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE -- Apr 7 -- He co-owns a trendy bar in San Francisco and two restaurants...and founded Friendster, the site that kick-started the social networking phenomenon in 2003. Abrams is back at it with Socializr (Jonathan + two full time employees, $770k angel funding). Like MyPunchbowl and Renkoo, it is positioned as an alternative to Evite. While Evite limits users to its templates, on Socializr, they can personalize their invitations with music and videos. Instead of re-creating their profile, Socializr will find users' photos on Flickr, their profile on MySpace and the latest entries in their Xanga blog, putting them all on one page. Users can see their friends' party plans. "This is something I wanted to do at Friendster but I wasn't able to," Abrams said. "It's something Friendster still hasn't done." FULL ARTICLE @ SF GATE
Mark Brooks: I'm not really the bald guy. I'm on the left in this photo. Friendster was a victim of it's own success. Jonathan will be happy to take a more slow and steady (wins the race) approach this time around.
