Hmmm....

"The thing is exploding," said Scott Weiss, a general partner at the venture firm. "I was part of the founding team at Hotmail, and it reminds me of that."

Skout does 300 million flirt messages a month.

Hotmail was more general purpose than flirting messages.

It will be interesting to see if Skout will go the general-purpose-messaging route.

It's also interesting to note that Skout was turned down by something like 100 investors before receiving $22 million in funding.

It really is feast-or-famine out there for startups.