Flixster has to be loving the Facebook rumor mill
With all of these multiple-billion dollar valuations being thrown around for Facebook and MySpace, my guess is that Flixster co-founder Joe Greenstein and the rest of the crew over there are feeling pretty good about their situation.
The last time Vator.tv caught up with Greenstein, in June, he told us that they were at nine million unique visitors per month. About 3.5 million of those came via Facebook, thanks to the popular widget that Flixster had just built for that platform in May. You can click on Joe's video pitch to the left.
While that’s not as big enough to crack the Top 50, according to comScore’s September report, Flixster got to that level in just 18 months, and with less than 10 employees.
I have no idea whether Flixster will ultimately conquer, fall to or coexist with the Internet Movie Database, better known as IMDb, but you’ve got to love a site where you can see glossy publicity shots of everyone from Orlando Bloom to Sophia Loren – right next to a clip of Slim Pickens’ character in Dr. Strangelove wrangling an atomic bomb out of its bay and riding it to Armageddon.
And in another sign of how hard it is for traditional media companies to keep up with social networking sites, Flixster’s users supply the site with a steady stream of movie-industry news -- for free.
The company has been hiring and expanding, thanks to the $2 million Series A round it raised eight months ago from Jeremy Liew at LightSpeed Ventures. My guess is that the valuation on the next round will be well north of that one.