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Did you copy an existing popular website and sell it off to a big corporation too dumb to realize what’s going on? Twice? Xochi Birch did, first with Ringo and then Bebo. Today’s featured commenter, Antilles_Prime, explains the kudos she’s earned:

well, at least she admits to it; there is very little “original thought” out there, from academia to business — its all on the shoulder of giants.

I think this also goes to show how an idea can hit a market over and over, but until that market “ecosystem” is ready to grow that idea into a hit, well, you are pounding sand. There were quite a few different variations of social networks way before facebook, zuckerburg just hit the lotto on timing.

theres a lot of smart people out there in the tech world, who work hard and have good strategies —- but just like in life, sometimes the difference is a coin toss.

give her credit for seeing the upside; she kept attacking that niche until it hit.

Don’t call it a “social network” — the product that will save Yahoo is an “enhanced profile.” Which just happens to look exactly like someone’s profile page on Facebook or MySpace — friends, updates, and all of that. CNET News editor-in-chief Dan Farber got the PowerPoint deck, as did AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher. Is it something they teach you in journalism school — that writing about tech involves fawning over something simply because it is new and you got to see it first? I never got to take that class. (Screenshot via Webware)

Everyone tells you to listen to your customers. In the case of Brad Fitzpatrick’s LiveJournal, an online-diary site latched onto by pervy teens and other oddballs, that may have been exactly the wrong advice, says one LiveJournal user. [Randomwalker's Journal]

Slide and RockYou, the two largest developers of Facebook apps, have long had a serious rivalry over the most frivolous Web software. But the two may be pulling apart. Slide, Max Levchin’s SuperPoke machine, signaled yesterday that it’s betting on online entertainment, partnering with Hollywood to bring mainstream content to its FunSpace apps. RockYou, meanwhile, seems to be turning into a gamemaker. “We want to be like the Electronic Arts of social networks, and build games for social networks,” RockYou CEO Lance Tokuda, shown here, said today at the Startonomics conference in San Francisco, referring to the dominant maker of videogames.

Build, or perhaps buy. In July, RockYou acquired Speed Racing, one of the top games on Facebook. But RockYou, in diverting its attention from its rivalry with Slide, will face well-funded competitors in startups Zynga and SGN. By the time all this becomes a serious business, isn’t it just as likely Electronic Arts will be the Electronic Arts of social games?

The folks at Loopt managed to garner a heaping helping of positive publicity from Michael Arrington by releasing a tool allowing readers of Arrington’s TechCrunch blog to stalk each other out in the real world. And not only will it help you raise all sorts of privacy concerns among perfect strangers, Arrington himself will tell you where he is in the world at all times. So it shouldn’t be hard to find him when he ditches the plebes at the next TechCrunch event for a Scotch-fueled afterparty. (Photo by Andrew Mager)

With already pissed off VCs demanding their money back, Uber.com — a social network for hipsters — is doing anything but. Uber.com first called it quits last Friday but the LA-based website is now begging its users to spam its link on Facebook and MySpace in an effort to save it. A cunning strategy to let as many people know how small of a failure you are. [TechNews.LA]

Windows only: Up-and-coming instant messaging application Digsby has released a new update with significant performance improvements and added support for business-oriented social networking site LinkedIn. Performance improvements include optimized RAM usage (the fruits of the last test release), a snappier interface, better connectivity with IM networks, and bug fixes galore. Beyond that, the IM application that made its name by integrating with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter continues to improve by adding social network LinkedIn to the fold. Digsby has quickly established itself as a killer tool for managing and staying up to date with IM, email, and social networking, and right now the biggest question is: When will we see the promised Mac and Linux flavors? Digsby is a free download, Windows only.

From a Kaplan survey, 10 percent of admissions officers surveyed at top-tier colleges admit to using social network profiles as an additional tool to evaluate applicants. Within that group, 38 percents say the kids’ online profiles negatively affected their chances of getting in. Some of the admissions officers interviewed say that they don’t go out of their way to peek into the students’ lives online but wouldn’t hesitate to Google more information. [Chicago Tribune] (Photo by star5112)

Update: Looks like Get My Tagged Pics is no longer available. Apologies! Social media enthusiast Alana Taylor put together a Facebook application that’s not only worth installing, it can actually save you time and keep you away from one of the web’s most powerful procrastination portals. Get My Tagged Pics does exactly what you might think, pulling together every picture your friends have tagged you in, and offers Zip-compressed archives of 10 at a time for downloading. The photo files themselves are web-compressed, but you save yourself a lot of right-clicking, and the listless time you would’ve spent digging through friends’ profiles the morning after a party.