Second Degree

Some three years, three months and twenty four days after it died, sixdegrees.com says it’s relaunching. Probably trying to build on the popularity of Friendster, it looks like the sixdegrees.com domain name is now owned by Justin Champion of Synergy6, the same guy who was sued for spamming by Microsoft and New York State Attorny General Elliot Spitzer.

Incase you didn’t know, sixdegrees was the original networking site, they (by they I mean original owners sixdegrees, inc. and later YouthStream Media Networks) own US patent #6,175,831 or the “six degrees patent” that Tribe and LinkedIn paid $700,000 to use.

Now, a LOT of people disliked sixdegrees because of their own “spamming techniques” but not me, between May 1998 and December 2000 I was completely immersed in the world of sixdegrees. I met a huge group of people whom I’m still in contact with to this very day… In fact, my trip to Portland was to visit someone I met off sixdegrees as part of the bman’s pub group. So as you can imagine, I’ll have nothing ill said about sixdegrees, hell, I’ve sat in their head office drinking free beer out a fish tank cooler because of them.

Last year I caught wind of a beta test going on with the “new” sixdegrees which was then owned by worldshine.com and to say I was hugely disappointed was an understatment… It lacked everything that made sixdegrees a fun place to hang out and to learn that the sixdegrees name and domain has fallen into the hands of spammers, well it saddens me no end.