Social Networks are all the craze right now. I’m all over the social networking world as can be seen on my profile page. Every one of these websites require the collection of personal information and most of them publish more of it than users realize.
If they are going to have our personal information, it makes sense that we at least know who they are. It was surprisingly difficult to dig up some of this information but I offer it here as a public service.
www.facebook.com
In September, 2006, Yahoo attempted to buy Facebook but was turned down. The major stock owers according to WallstreetFighter.com are:
Mark Zuckerberg (founder)
Chris Hughes (co-founder)
Dustin Moskovitz (co-founder)
Adam D’Angelo (CTO)
Peter Thiel and the Founders Fund
Accel Partners
Greylock Partners
Meritech Capital Partners
Jim Breyer ( Accel Partner & Facebook Board Member)
Microsoft $240 Million
Li-Ka-Shing $60 Million
Rupert Murdoch bought Intermix Media in July of 2005. He also owns many other large companies including the Fox television network. You can read about Rupert on his wikipedia page.
Twitter was a project started under a private company named Obvious in March of 2006 according to their “About Us” web page. They haven’t updated their blog since January and I’m having a hard time finding anything significant that the company has done besides Twitter.
Pownce is owned by Megatechtronium, Inc. Their address is 561 Baker Street, Apt. 11, San Francisco, CA 94117. The company was started by Kevin Rose, Leah Culver, Daniel Burka, and Shawn Allen in June, 2007.
Jaiku is currently owned by Google. It was started by Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen in July,2006. It is run out of Finland. It is unsure what Google plans to do with the site but you can bet that your information will be assimilated into the Google databases.
Friendster remains privately owned despite a bid by google to buy them in 2003 for $30 million. It is based in San Fransisco, California. You can find their contact information here.
del.icio.us
Yahoo aquired Del.icio.us in 2005
www.socialthing.com
Socialthing! is a TechStars company. It went into private beta in March, 2008. It was founded by the current CE, Matt Galligan. This company has not been proven so be cautious when offering up your personal information. With that being said, I use their services.
