Shawn Fanning is an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, and angel investor. He developed Napster, one of the first popular peer-to-peer ("P2P") file sharing platforms, in 1999. The popularity of Napster was widespread and Fanning was featured on the cover of Time magazine.
Seesmic was a suite of freeware web, mobile, and desktop applications which allowed users to simultaneously manage user accounts for multiple social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter.
Songza was a free music streaming and recommendation service for Internet users in the United States and Canada.
ooVoo was a video chat and a messaging app developed by ooVoo LLC and owned by Krush Technologies, LLC. ooVoo had applications for Android, iOS, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Windows Phone, and Facebook. The original Microsoft Windows app was released in 2007. It was discontinued on November 25, 2017.
Flipboard is a news aggregator and social network aggregation company based in Palo Alto, California, with offices in New York, Vancouver, and Bejiing. Its software, also known as Flipboard, was first released in July 2010. It aggregates content from social media, news feeds, photo sharing sites, and other websites, presents it in magazine format, and allows users to "flip" through the articles, images, and videos being shared. Readers can also save stories into Flipboard magazines. As of March 2016 the company claims there have been 28 million magazines created by users on Flipboard. The service can be accessed via web browser, or by a Flipboard application for Microsoft Windows and macOS, and via mobile apps for iOS and Android. The client software is available at no charge and is localized in 21 languages.
SKOUT is the developer of a location-based social networking and dating application and website. SKOUT was one of the first dating and mobile people discovery applications to emphasize generalized user location. SKOUT is available on both iOS and Android operating systems. Other SKOUT properties include Nixter, a nightlife app, and Fuse, an ephemeral group messaging app. SKOUT reported that over 500 million connections were made using its app in 2013.
WhatsApp is a freeware, cross-platform, centralized instant messaging (IM) and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by United States tech conglomerate Meta Platforms. It allows users to send text, voice messages and video messages, make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other content. WhatsApp's client application runs on mobile devices, and can be accessed from computers. The service requires a cellular mobile telephone number to sign up. In January 2018, WhatsApp released a standalone business app called WhatsApp Business which can communicate with the standard WhatsApp client.
Beamly was a social platform based in London, UK and New York City, United States. The company was founded in April 2011 as tBone TV, later renamed to Zeebox, by Ernesto Schmitt and Anthony Rose. It was started as a social discovery and engagement platform with 2nd-screen TV, creating the concept of social television.
Viber, or Rakuten Viber, is a cross-platform voice over IP (VoIP) and instant messaging (IM) software application owned by Japanese multinational company Rakuten, provided as freeware for the Google Android, iOS, Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS and Linux platforms. Users are registered and identified through a cellular telephone number, although the service is accessible on desktop platforms without needing mobile connectivity. In addition to instant messaging it allows users to exchange media such as images and video records, and also provides a paid international landline and mobile calling service called Viber Out. As of 2018, there are over a billion registered users on the network.
Messenger is an American proprietary instant messaging app and platform developed by Meta Platforms. Originally developed as Facebook Chat in 2008, the company revamped its messaging service in 2010, released standalone iOS and Android apps in 2011, and released standalone Facebook Portal hardware for Messenger calling in 2018. In April 2015, Facebook launched a dedicated website interface, Messenger.com, and separated the messaging functionality from the main Facebook app, allowing users to use the web interface or download one of the standalone apps. In April 2020, Facebook released a Messenger desktop app for Windows and macOS.
News360 was a personalized news aggregation app for smartphones, tablets and the web. It attempted to learn a user's interests by analyzing their interaction with news stories on the app and using semantic analysis and natural language processing to create an Interest Graph and construct a unique feed of relevant content for each user. The app claims an audience of more than 4 million users.
Upptalk was a proprietary voice-over-IP service and software application that provided mobile phone numbers in the cloud and allows users to call or text any phone for free whether or not the device receiving the calls and texts has the Yuilop application. The service was discontinued in 2017 and even its domain was abandoned.
Chartboost is a San Francisco-based mobile game in-app programmatic advertising and monetization platform. Chartboost SDK enables developers to monetize on their mobile apps and connect advertisers to global in-app inventory. Chartboost's platform allows video game developers to create customized interstitial and video ads to promote new games. Developers have direct access to game data derived from Chartboost-enabled games. As of 2016, Chartboost had been integrated into more than 300,000 games with 40 billion game sessions per month.
Firebase, Inc. is a set of backend cloud computing services and application development platforms provided by Google. It hosts databases, services, authentication, and integration for a variety of applications, including Android, iOS, JavaScript, Node.js, Java, Unity, PHP, and C++.
Any.do is a productivity platform aimed at task and project management. It is available on mobile, web, and wearables with built-in integrations including calendars, chat applications, and virtual assistants.
Sunrise is a discontinued electronic calendar application for mobile and desktop. The service was launched in 2013 by designers Pierre Valade and Jeremy Le Van. In October 2015, Microsoft announced that they had merged the Sunrise Calendar team into the larger Microsoft Outlook team where they will work closely with the Microsoft Outlook Mobile service.
Picsart is an Armenian-American technology company based in Miami, Florida and Yerevan, Armenia that develops the Picsart suite of online photo and video editing applications, with a social creative community. The platform allows users to take and edit pictures and videos, draw with layers, and share the images on Picsart and other social networks. It is one of the world's most popular apps, with reportedly more than 1 billion downloads across 180 countries.
The following is a timeline of WhatsApp, a proprietary cross-platform, encrypted, instant messaging client for smartphones.
Crashlytics was a Boston, Massachusetts-based software company founded in May 2011 by entrepreneurs Wayne Chang and Jeff Seibert. Crashlytics helps collecting, analyzing and organizing app crash reports.
