Time Online has an article today titled—Start-Up Your Engines!—wherein five veteran venture capitalists share their views of what's ahead for new companies seeking investments.

According to Eric Roston, author of this article, the five participants in this Q&A article are: Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association; Brenda Gavin, managing partner of Quaker BioVentures; John Preston, associate director of the M.I.T. Entrepreneurship Center; Gary Rieschel, managing partner of Mobius Venture Capital; and Susan Woodward, founder of Sand Hill Econometrics.

I wanted to extract a comment made by Gary Rieschel, managing partner of Mobius Venture Capital, regarding social networking services (emphasis is mine):

RIESCHEL: One example from last year is social networking. That was ridiculous from a moneymaking perspective.

TIME: Like Friendster?

RIESCHEL: We looked at five sites and passed on everything. In '99 everyone got in trouble when maybe 17 companies were all trying to sell pet food online. At Mobius, now if we identify more than four venture-backed start-ups in a sector, we won't bite. There are at least 14 social-networking sites.

Yep, at least 14 social networking sites...