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Social Networking - Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Is Dalton Caldwell The 2nd Coming of Zuckerberg?

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg gets so much exposure. He's on the cover of Newsweek, Parade Magazine, you name it. The only thing that could get him more press attention is if he started dating the Olsen twins. But if trends continue Zuckerberg may have to start throwing elbows in the spotlight with imeem founder Dalton Caldwell. Like Zuckerberg (age 23), Caldwell is a spring chicken at age 27.

Caldwell graduated from Stanford in 2002 with a B.S. in Symbolic Systems. From there he launched imeem as another instant messenger but quickly changed that idea and focused on music sharing. The startup has succeeded in navigating licensing issues that have destroyed other startups through some common sense as well as some luck that his timing was right - 4 of the 5 largest record labels have agreed to work with imeem.

If you haven't used it, Imeem lets you listen to songs for free - perhaps some that you have seen imeem friends listening to - although you can't download them and own them. You can do the same for videos and photos, share them through widgets with your pals.

From the year ending September 2007, imeem grew at a 1590% increase, to 3.2M uniques. That growth eclipses other social networking bigs: Facebook (129% to 30M uniques); Bebo 83% to 4.3M uniques) and Myspace 23% to 68M uniques.

At this rate, we might expect to see imeem achieve Facebook stature within a year and make it the 2nd most important music site on the net (behind iTunes). Personally, we'd rather spend time on free and social imeem than iTunes.

Read - NY Times Q&A