Faves.com has a new mission

Faves.com is making a comeback. The Seattle social bookmarking startup, formerly known as Blue Dot, was on its death bed five months ago when I last wrote about it.

Now, the company has reeled in a small $75,000 angel investment from Geoff Entress and existing backers, a significant "down round" over the previous capital raises. Still, that's enough cash to keep the lights on and the servers humming as Faves.com looks to subsist on advertising revenue and explore new revenue models.

With operating expenses continuing to be cut, self sufficiency should be coming soon, said angel investor Mike Koss, the sole employee at Faves.com.

"Rather than position Faves as another social network, as we have in the past, we are repositioning ourselves as a social utility," said Koss, who who also heads the Seattle Internet incubator Startpad.org where Faves continues to be based.

The Internet startup will integrate its social bookmarking tools with Facebook, Twitter and other services, a much easier proposition then when the company started in 2006. At that time, Koss said each of the social networks operated as "an island unto itself."

"Now, in 2009, with features like Facebook Connect, Google's Friend Connect, and Twitter's oAuth, third party sites can integrate into a user's existing social networks, without the need to reinvent the wheel, or create an entirely independent user experience," he said. (Interestingly, Microsoft made some similar comments this evening with the launch of its new Vine.net service.)

Given the new world order of social networks, Koss said he wants Faves.com to simply be the easiest way for users to "save and share bookmarks" no matter what the communication platform or network.

This isn't the first time that Entress has participated in the re-start of a Seattle Internet company. He's also an investor in Judy's Book, which a group of Internet investors salvaged last October.

Even after laying off all of its employees last fall, Faves.com was able to maintain a decent audience of users. Traffic has been falling steadily over the past few months, according to Compete.com. But it still has about 115,000 unique visitors per month.

Faves.com previously raised $1.7 million, so the latest capital infusion is relatively small. Still, Koss -- who is the only person now overseeing the site --  said it should be enough cash to keep Faves.com going for another two years.

Related content: "Lessons in Startup Failure"

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