Community Connect, Parent Company of AsianAvenue.com and BlackPlanet.com Celebrating 10 Years

Community Connect Inc. (CCI) is the first multicultural-focused social networking company.  Today I found out that CCI is celebrating their 10 year anniversary this summer.

Some of the social networks that CCI has powered under their leadership includes BlackPlanet.com (African American focused), MiGente.com (Latino focused), AsianAve.com (Asian focused), GLEE.com (GLBT focused), and Faithbase.com (Christian focused).  According to Comscore, Community Connect’s social networks are the 5th largest U.S. social network property based on pageviews.

Community Connect was founded by Benjamin Sun, Calvin Wong, Peter Chen, and Michael Montero.  Between the aforementioned social networks, Community Connect accounts for 19 million members.  All of those members have access to various Community Connect sponsors such as Monster Worldwide’s 30,000+ corporate customers.

BlackPlanet alone accounts for 16.5 million members and had 80 million page views in June 2007.  Hitwise ranks BlackPlanet at #5 behind sites like MySpace and Facebook.

It is compelling to see how dedicated certain communities have been with their social networks of choice even 10 years later.  I plan on interviewing Benjamin Sun sometime soon to see what the future holds for Community Connect since there is fierce competition out there and curious about their strategy on how to maintain their marketshare.

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5. WTF WSJ? How Are You Now In A Definitive Agreement With MySpace’s Parent Company?