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Social Networking - Thursday, September 13, 2007

Doomed SocNet Eons Goes With Mass Lay-offs

Word is out that Boston-based social network Eons is cleaving off most of its staff. We wrote about the startup in March:" We don't get Eons. Its TV commercials featuring its founder Jeff Taylor are terrible - the one where he yells "Boom, Boom, Boom." And who buys TV time to drive traffic to your social network? Still, the company was able to raise $22M today in Series B funding led by Charles River Ventures with Intel Capital, Humana, General Catalyst Partners and Sequoia Capital. We suppose those guys just like the market and think that with enough cash, Eons can figure it out. Plus they must be seduced by Taylor who founded Monster.com back in the day.

What will Eons do with the cash? Taylor says he is planning to launch EonsLife, a magazine meant for members of the same 50-plus age group that social networking site eons.com caters to. Yahoo had a similar idea with Yahoo Internet Life before it folded. The one things we like about Eons is its search engine Cranky, which was developed for poor ideas and only displays 4 search results per page. "

One of the problem with Eons, in our view, is that Taylor clearly doesn't know how to run a startup, or he forgot how it works having worked at Monster once it got big. Eons laid off 24 employees today, which is just 35% of its staff. Why on earth would you hire so many people before you get the model right? And were the VCs powerless to do anything about it?

Read - Xconomy