Socialthing

Last updated

Socialthing was a social news aggregator that founded in 2007 and was acquired by AOL the following year for an undisclosed sum. Later renamed AOL Lifestream, the service was a central part of AOL's unsuccessful attempt to compete against upstart social networks such as Facebook.

Contents

History

Socialthing was an early social aggregator that let users manage multiple social networking feeds from a single Web dashboard. The company was founded by Ben Brightwell, Brian DeWitt, and Matt Galligan, and was part of the inaugural TechStars startup accelerator program in Boulder in 2007. [1] Socialthing launched a private beta with support for Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Vimeo, Pownce, and LiveJournal in early 2008. [2]

Socialthing differentiated itself from Friendfeed and other aggregators through the use of an algorithm that determined users' friends—at the time, competing services required users to define a list of friends for each service. CEO Matt Galligan described Socialthing's advantage to users as "simply just being able to see what all of your friends on all of your networks are doing without ever having to add them, and then being able to communicate with them, all without ever leaving the same site." [3]

Acquisition

In August 2008, AOL confirmed that it had acquired Socialthing. The service was incorporated into AOL's People Network's division, which also managed AIM and Bebo, the social network AOL acquired for $850 million. [4] The price AOL paid for Socialthing was not disclosed, but Venture Capital Journal listed the acquisition as #2 in its list of “Top M&A Returns for VC-backed Internet Companies” in 2008. [5]

By mid-2009, Socialthing had evolved into AOL's social toolbar. It let users sign in with AIM, Bebo, or ICQ credentials and chat with friends from the toolbar, even as other sites were being visited from the browser. [6]

In 2010, Socialthing was rebranded as AOL Lifestream. [7] By that time, AOL's acquisition-driven social strategy was struggling. The company reportedly sold Bebo to a hedge fund for just $10 million in mid-2010. [8]

By this point, Galligan had left AOL [9] to start SimpleGeo and Brightwell was working for another TechStars company, Occipital. [10]

As of October 2013, the AOL Lifestream service is still active.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AOL</span> American internet portal

AOL is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">StumbleUpon</span> Discovery and advertisement engine

StumbleUpon was a browser extension, toolbar, and mobile app with a "Stumble!" button that, when pushed, opened a semi-random website or video that matched the user's interests, similar to a random web search engine. Users were able to filter results by type of content and were able to discuss such webpages via virtual communities and were able to rate such webpages via like buttons. StumbleUpon was shut down in June 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flock (web browser)</span> Discontinued web browser integrating social networking and Web 2.0 features

Flock is a discontinued web browser that specialized in providing social networking and Web 2.0 facilities built into its user interface. Earlier versions of Flock used the Gecko HTML rendering engine by Mozilla. Version 2.6.2, released on January 27, 2011, was the last version based on Mozilla Firefox. Starting with version 3, Flock was based on Chromium and so used the WebKit rendering engine. Flock was available as a free download, and supported Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and, at one time, Linux as well.

Flixster is an American social-networking movie website for discovering new movies, learning about movies, and meeting others with similar tastes in movies, currently owned by parent company Fandango. The formerly independent site, allows users to view movie trailers as well as learn about new and upcoming movies at the box office. It was originally based in San Francisco, California and was founded by Joe Greenstein and Saran Chari on January 20, 2006. It was also the former parent company of Rotten Tomatoes from January 2010 to February 17, 2016. On February 17, 2016, Flixster, including Rotten Tomatoes, was acquired by Fandango.

hi5 American social networking service

hi5 is an American social networking service based in San Francisco, California. It is owned by The Meet Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bebo</span> American social networking website

Bebo was an American social networking website that originally operated from 2005 until its bankruptcy in 2013 and relaunched in February 2021. The site relaunched several times after its bankruptcy with a number of short-lived offerings, including instant messaging and video streaming, until its acquisition by Amazon in July 2019 when it was shut down. It was announced in January 2021 that it would be returning as a new social media site the month after. By May 2022, it had once again been shut down, without having ever left beta testing.

Techstars is a global investment business that provides access to capital, one-on-one mentorship, a worldwide network and customized programming for early-stage entrepreneurs. It was founded in 2006 in Boulder, Colorado. As of May 2022, the company had accepted over 2,900 companies into its accelerator programs with a combined market capitalization of $71bn USD.

Next Big Sound (NBS) is a New York-based company which provides analytics for online music. The company analyses the popularity of musicians in social networks, streaming services, and radio. The company was acquired by Pandora Radio in May 2015.

Aardvark was a social search service that connected users live with friends or friends-of-friends who were able to answer their questions, also known as a knowledge market. Users submitted questions via the Aardvark website, email or instant messenger and Aardvark identified and facilitated a live chat or email conversation with one or more topic experts in the 'askers' extended social network. Aardvark was used for asking subjective questions for which human judgment or recommendation was desired. It was also used extensively for technical support questions. Users could also review question and answer history and other settings on the Aardvark website. Google acquired Aardvark for $50 million on February 11, 2010. In September 2011, Google announced it would discontinue a number of its products, including Aardvark.

Crunchbase is a company providing business information about private and public companies. Their content includes investment and funding information, founding members and individuals in leadership positions, mergers and acquisitions, news, and industry trends.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hootsuite</span> Social media management platform

Hootsuite is a social media management platform, created by Ryan Holmes in 2008. The system's user interface takes the form of a dashboard, and supports social network integrations for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube and TikTok.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Facebook</span>

Facebook is a social networking service originally launched as FaceMash on October 28, 2003, before changing its name to TheFacebook on February 4, 2004. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg and college roommates and fellow Harvard University students, in particular Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and gradually most universities in the United States and Canada, corporations, and by September 2006, to everyone with a valid email address along with an age requirement of being 13 and older.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Path (social network)</span> Social network

Path was a social networking-enabled photo sharing and messaging service for mobile devices that was launched in 14 November 2010. The service allows users to share up to a total of 50 contacts with their close friends and family. Based in San Francisco, California, the company was founded by Shawn Fanning and former Facebook executive Dave Morin.

Criterion Capital Partners LLC, also known as simply Criterion, was a private equity fund based in Los Angeles, California. It was best known for being the owner of Bebo, from 2010-2013.

The Conduit toolbar was an online platform that allowed web publishers to create custom toolbars, web apps, and mobile apps at no cost. It was developed by Conduit Inc. but demerged to Perion Network. Conduit had approximately 260,000 registered publishers who have collectively created content downloaded by more than 250 million end users. Web apps and pieces of content developed through Conduit's platform can be distributed and exchanged online via the Conduit App Marketplace. Currently, 60 million users consume apps from the marketplace on a daily basis.

Snapchat is an American multimedia instant messaging app and service developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc. One of the principal features of Snapchat is that pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before they become inaccessible to their recipients. The app has evolved from originally focusing on person-to-person photo sharing to presently featuring users' "Stories" of 24 hours of chronological content, along with "Discover", letting brands show ad-supported short-form content. It also allows users to store photos in a password-protected area called "my eyes only". It has also reportedly incorporated limited use of end-to-end encryption, with plans to broaden its use in the future.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SendGrid</span> Email delivery service

SendGrid is a Denver, Colorado-based customer communication platform for transactional and marketing email. The company was founded by Isaac Saldana, Jose Lopez, and Tim Jenkins in 2009, and incubated through the Techstars accelerator program. As of 2017, SendGrid has raised over $81 million and has offices in Denver, Colorado; Boulder, Colorado; Irvine, California; Redwood City, California; and London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Balderton Capital</span> British venture capital firm

Balderton Capital is a venture capital firm based in London, UK, that invests in early-stage, technology and internet startup companies in Europe. It is considered to be among the four-biggest venture capital firms in the English capital.

Skimlinks is a content monetization platform for online publishers. It specializes in technology that automatically affiliates product links from publishers' commerce content.

This page is a timeline of social media. Major launches, milestones, and other major events are included.

References

  1. ↑ Alicia, Wallace (May 17, 2010). "Snapshots of Boulder TechStars". Longmont Times Call. Retrieved October 10, 2013.
  2. ↑ Hendrikson, Mark (10 March 2008). "Watch Out FriendFeed: Socialthing! Is Even Easier to Use". TechCrunch. Retrieved 11 October 2013.
  3. ↑ Saleem, Muhammad (23 March 2008). "Interview: Socialthing! Founder Matt Galligan". Readwrite. Retrieved 11 October 2013.
  4. ↑ Kincaid, Jason (August 14, 2008). "Confirmed: AOL Acquires FriendFeed Competitor Socialthing". TechCrunch.
  5. ↑ "Venture Capital Journal cites SocialThing as #2 M&A Return for Internet Companies in 2008" . Retrieved October 2, 2013.
  6. ↑ Eldon, Eric (3 July 2009). "Ain't no thang: Socialthing sort of becomes AIM Connect". VentureBeat. Retrieved 11 October 2013.
  7. ↑ Alicia, Wallace (May 17, 2010). "Snapshots of Boulder TechStars". Longmont Times Call. Retrieved October 10, 2013.
  8. ↑ Lapowski, Issie (July 16, 2013). "Michael Birch: Why I Bought Bebo Back". Inc. Retrieved 11 October 2013.
  9. ↑ Siegler, MG (22 August 2011). "SimpleGeo Cofounder Matt Galligan Steps Down; Will Focus On Helping TechStars And A Non-Profit". TechCrunch. Retrieved 11 October 2013.
  10. ↑ Alicia, Wallace (May 17, 2010). "Snapshots of Boulder TechStars". Longmont Times Call. Retrieved October 10, 2013.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.