Will Piczo Be the Next MySpace?

Piczo CEO Jeremy Verba claims that the Piczo website is "…the biggest social networking site you haven’t heard of yet." He may be right. As of October 2006, Piczo boasted 17 million sites registered by its users (10 million uniques) and 2.5 billion page views per month. (For comparison’s sake, Facebook had 7 million users as of March of this year.) The U.K. import began as a photo-sharing site, but, upon user requests, branched into social networking.

However, what’s different about Piczo is that there is no search feature - adding a friend is on an invite-only basis. As more and more MySpacers clutter up their profile with casual friends & acquaintances, finding the friends you really want to network with becomes a challenge. Additionally, privacy concerns at both MySpace & Facebook (MySpace has sexual predators & Facebook users were in an uproar over the news feed) have many users wanting a more private place to network.

Today, TechCrunch reports that Piczo is growing at a rate of 35,000 new users a day and that they have just made a deal with Flock to distribute a Piczo-branded version of the browser. So, will Piczo be the next MySpace or even the next Facebook? I think it’s possible. As MySpace aged and grew, the teens and early 20’s kids joined Facebook; but where will their kid brothers and sisters choose to hang out? Piczo could be a good bet.