socialthing! Jul 2005 - Feb 2007
I was heavily involved in the genesis of socialthing! Actually, I was the one who came up with the idea and brought it to the table.
Before it was known as socialthing, the site was called socialville, and it was going to be a social networking application that brought everything you were doing online into one centralized location to make it easier for you to share with your friends and family. Brian DeWitt and I spent months working on the idea before it was suggested that we partner up with Matt Galligan and start a company to capitalize on our ideas.
After getting together in our Basecamp, we decided that we wanted to create a web development company, shared equally among the three of us, called digitalsoap. We wanted to focus on making intuitive web applications that made managing your online content simple. Brian and I brought in socialville, while Matt brought the Riverton School District site, along with a project with the developers of iPodderX.
I was once credited as the main reason for the company's vision, but as time went on Matt kept downplaying that fact while reducing my shares in the company we hadn't incorporated yet. This, and the fact that we spent over a year talking about a company/website, and doing little to no work on it, I decided it was best that I move back home to focus on other things.
After moving home, the digitalsoap/socialthing! story had changed. The site and company had always been the brainchild of Brian and Matt, and I was just helping out. When they talked about finally incorporating the company, they decided to not list me as a co-founder. My work load would have to increase, and I would have to prove myself if I wanted anything. I didn't agree to the new, "terms," so I quit. Any mention of me was dropped completely. Digitalsoap/socialthing! became the idea of Brian DeWitt and Matt Galligan.
Right after my departure, the investors finally started to hand out money, and the company was incorporated as Socialthing! Inc. The application finally went into serious development and hit the market in March of 2008 as a life streaming app. AOL acquired socialthing! in August of 2008, then rolled it into AIM and Bebo. As of 2010, socialthing.com now redirects to Aol Lifestream.