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"A number of social networking services are up for sale at the moment.  Two in particular - VideoCodeZone and Mojungle, are MySpace add-ons that have been covered extensively on Mashable.  I think both of these startups are wise to get out of the market as soon as possible, for reasons I'll explain.  \nVideoCodeZone, according to Mashable Labs, was the number three video site for MySpace users in September.  How much is that worth?  According to the founders, they're receiving 200 million monthly pageviews and make $47,000 per month.  Even though those figures may be exaggerated, they're in line with what we know about the leading MySpace layouts sites (now do you understand why Mashable is so obsessed with this market?).  They have a database of 415,000 members, with 1,800,000 daily unique visitors, they claim.  If you want to buy VideoCodeZone immediately, it'll cost you $800,000 on SitePoint.  The bidding, meanwhile, has reached $350,000.\nIf you'd asked me 3 months ago to value VideoCodeZone, I'd have placed them in the $600,000 - $800,000 range.  But then something happened that could be disastrous: MySpace blocked them.   In September, they were the 3rd most popular video provider on MySpace behind MySpace Video and YouTube.  Now that they're blocked, the site's biggest traffic source is set to dry up.  Incidentally, the most likely acquirer, LiveUniverse, is currently suing MySpace over their tendency to block certain third-party add-ons.  VideoCodeZone face a second problem, too: they host a massive number of copyrighted videos, and could face legal problems as media companies crack down on these sites.  Universal Music, you'll remember, is suing MySpace, Grouper and Bolt.com.  \n\n\nA second site, Mojungle, is currently for sale on eBay - the auction ends on December 14th.  Starting bid: $60,000.  As mentioned previously, Mojungle lets you post cellphone photos and videos to your social networking profiles via an embedded widget.  I actually like the service, but if you've been following Mashable over the past few weeks, you'll know they face more competition than ever before.  Minor rivals like Abazab, Umundo, Supcast, Nakama, Kindfish and FotoDunk (recently acquired by iLike, despite having zero traction on MySpace) are small fry when you consider that MySpace Mobile and YouTube Mobile are ramping up.  What's more, social networking will be pre-installed on mobile devices if companies like Oz succeed in their aims.  \nSo where does that leave the add-on sites?  In previous instances (YouTube for video, Slide.com for slideshows, Photobucket for photos), add-on services have had time to build critical mass before the social networks were able to roll out their own products - the mobile startups just haven't achieved that.  But while Mojungle might not see massive success as an independent company, an existing service could certainly buy it to save building their own mobile service.  And there's still an opportunity to build it out as a blog/MySpace add-on, but that window is closing fast.\nWhile we're on the subject of sales, note that ScriptMimic is being sold, only a few weeks after I covered its launch.  Anyone else?\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2006/12/08/videocodezone-yours-for-800000/>