CNET GOING AFTER FACEBOOK

Not because of this news, but Facebook is in that limbo stage right now of whether to sell for the optimal price, finding that price and not letting your cruise ship pass you by (e.g. Friendster), or whether they can become a strong, sustainable company.

CNET Networks' Webshots property is taking a shot across the bow of Facebook with its new CollegeLive property, available only to college students, which launches today.

The site, restricted to users with an .edu address, will set up individual communities for each of 4,100 colleges and universities in the U.S., U.K. and Canada. Students can post photos of their exploits as they do on the general Webshots site. CollegeLive also offers social planning tools, a la Evite. The site aims to handle the whole event life cycle, helping students plan events, send out invitations and then post photos afterwards.

"We superserve lots of communities," said Charlie Barrett, VP of sales and marketing at Webshots. "We identified one of the most vital, robust communities that we've seen actively grow over the past year or so."

Competitors in the space include the established Facebook. But Webshots feels its content-screening policy will give it the edge when it comes to attracting advertisers. The company will monitor content posted by users and block items that wouldn't be acceptable to advertisers, company officials said. (full article)