Friendster recently announced that Scott Sassa, former President of NBC West Coast, will be taking over the CEO role from interim CEO, Tim Koogle, former CEO of Yahoo. Scott Sassa is the former wunderkind at Fox Network, Turner Entertainment, NBC, etc. where he has a solid track record of hits such as 'West Wing', 'Fear Factor', and 'Law & Order: SVU'.

Scott Sassa is an interesting choice to run a company like Friendster. I think it makes sense because internet companies are essentially becoming media companies. AOL was one of the first internet companies that went through this transformation and now they're part of a big media conglomerate. With the hiring of Terry Semel, Yahoo is also going through the transformation into a media company dependent on advertising and subscription revenue, just like network television and cable TV.

It seems that as internet companies mature, their business models are becoming more and more like their old-world counterparts. Therefore, it makes sense to recruit executives who have experience in running businesses driven by advertising and subscription revenue. Technology innovation is still important, but if the majority of your revenue is coming from advertisers who want to target your audience, the primary focus should be on tweaking business models and growing your audience to attract advertisers. That's why major media companies are run by people with a background in business rather than creative types.

Friendster has had its share of technology challenges, but the future success of Friendster is not going to be determined by the response time or the reliability of their website. What is going to drive Friendster's success is their ability to grow their audience while providing sticky services that keep them coming back. Once you have the demographics of this captive audience, the advertising money will follow. Friendster has the audience and the demographics, what they need to do now is figure out the sticky services.

Of course, who else is better at figuring out sticky services than traditional media executives? Given the television viewing habits of millions of people who religiously follow TV shows such as 'The West Wing' and 'Law and Order', I think Scott Sassa just might be the person for the job.