Formspring, the online question/answer service, has raised $11.5 million in Series A financing, bringing its total to $14 million. Now all the company has to do is figure out how to make money.
&''$14 million is a ton of money, especially for a site thata4‚¬a4„s only a year old with no revenue,&'' notes Liz Gannes at All Things Digital.
It not only has no revenue, but no business model. CEO Ade Olonoh &''has not yet figured that out,&'' reports CNET&'s Caroline McCarthy.
Along with the financing, Formspring announced the creation of a &''Respond&'' button that can be incorporated on outside Web sites, allowing the service to be distributed across the Web rather than centralized on Formspring&'s own site. Sites such as Huffington Post and AskMen.com are already incorporating the button, which works somewhat like Facebook&'s &''like&'' button. Answers to questions are housed on the publishers&' own sites.
Again, there&'s no indication on how this will yield returns for the company&'s investors. Redpoint Partners and Baseline Ventures led the new round. In March, the company raised $2.5 million from a group of angels along with Polaris Ventures.
Most of the attention the company has drawn has been negative: The site, which allows people to ask each other questions anonymously, became a hive spam and nasty insults and bullying among its teen users.
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Companies: Formspring
Companies: Formspring
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