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April 1, 2006

Stealth Startup Goop to Launch

Michael Arrington

66 comments »

Rumors about Palo Alto based stealth startup Goop have been buzzing for weeks now. A standard landing page accepting email submissions for beta testing is now up, and some information has been leaked about the company.

CEO Peter Gibbons (previously at Initech, a TPS automation company) gave me a walk through of the product earlier today, April 1, 2006. Goop certainly has the next generation web 2.0 features needed to compete with the more established players. And the whopping $30 million financing from prominent angel investor Josh Kopelman should give it enough staying power to attract the 20,000 or so email addresses it needs to be acquired by one of the big guys.

The core feature set includes a fully interactive 3D social tagging environment, first rate cut and paste bookmarklets, and with an Ajax/Flash rich interface with rounded corners and easy-on-the-eyes pastels. Also, RSS feeds are available for all FAQs.

The most interesting aspects of the service, however, are a number of del.icio.us/flickr-like features to allow anyone to create their own topic-based version of the main service, create a mashup with any XUL or LUX interface and prominently display the results to users on a Soap based platform with fully closed APIs. At this time, the service is available for download on the Mac platform only, using the Internet Explorer browser. Sign up for the closed beta here. Goop is a winner.

Update: This is my favorite so far today.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 1st, 2006 at 12:31 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Eric Willis

    April 1st, 2006 at 12:38 am

    HaHa. almost got me…must be April 1st.

  2. Peter Oliver

    April 1st, 2006 at 12:45 am

    I heard it also features the google maps api for easy geo-social-tagging of all invite only web 2.0 events.

    I hope to bring some competition to Goop with a soon to be released service that allows anyone to create rss-based apps via microformats. I call it “Aggregootr” …

    April 1st seems to be going strong this year.

  3. Kevin

    April 1st, 2006 at 12:46 am

    “…should give it enough staying power to attract the 20,000 or so email addresses it needs to be acquired by one of the big guys.”

    :-)

  4. Ashish

    April 1st, 2006 at 12:47 am

    Ha ha, took me a second there. April Fools!

  5. Kevin

    April 1st, 2006 at 12:47 am

    hahaha and the TPS thing - Make sure your TPS report has a cover page!

  6. Janice Sanchez

    April 1st, 2006 at 12:50 am

    I don’t get it.

  7. Michael Arrington

    April 1st, 2006 at 12:52 am

    Peter, It’s true, there is an excellent mashup with Google Maps as well. :-) I like the idea of aggregootr - there is a strong need for creation of rss apps via microformats. It seems like a niche market now, but so did yahoo when it first launched.

  8. Peter Oliver

    April 1st, 2006 at 12:57 am

    Michael, I shall reference your comment when I meet with potential investors next week.

    On a side note, imagine the dismay of the pour soul who was actually working on 3d social bookmarking or tagging…

  9. Peter

    April 1st, 2006 at 1:15 am

    Nice one… best startup launch I’ve read today.
    :)

  10. Mark Devlin

    April 1st, 2006 at 1:40 am

    Got me. Well done.

  11. Chris Rowe

    April 1st, 2006 at 1:46 am

    Hook, line, sinker

    Nice one

  12. Mark

    April 1st, 2006 at 2:30 am

    You had me until the Mac/IE part. It must be late.

  13. Daniel P Dykes, Rogue Connect

    April 1st, 2006 at 2:35 am

    Very clever, I’m enjoying April Fools this year - some very clever web things going on. Particularly appreciated Google’s Romance.

  14. Dennis Howlett

    April 1st, 2006 at 5:20 am

    Dang - got me!

  15. AjaxHotlist

    April 1st, 2006 at 5:26 am

    Man - swindled!

  16. BoardTracker

    April 1st, 2006 at 5:34 am

    Good one.. one of the more creative efforts today! :)

  17. Fred

    April 1st, 2006 at 5:40 am

    I was “wtf’ing” for a while and then I remembered. Nicely done ;)

  18. Steve

    April 1st, 2006 at 5:42 am

    Hey, uh.. Peter… I’m uh… going to need you to come in on, ah.. Saturday and, ah… start a new Web 2.0 company.

    …Yeah thanks… that’s great.

  19. Eric Petit

    April 1st, 2006 at 5:46 am

    Funy stuff but, still seems real !!! With Web 2.0 eveyr day looks like April 1st !!!!

  20. Dorrian

    April 1st, 2006 at 6:33 am

    Failure to have the courage to leave the actual date out of the body of the write up is disappointing. Otherwise - brilliant.

  21. James

    April 1st, 2006 at 7:31 am

    I’m an idiot.

  22. S

    April 1st, 2006 at 7:37 am

    Yeah, I’m a fool!

  23. Jonas

    April 1st, 2006 at 7:38 am

    Any follow on rounds available?

  24. Steve

    April 1st, 2006 at 7:41 am

    where’s my beta invite?

    I would’ve have known if u said the VC was a swede named Loof Lirpa.

  25. David Henderson

    April 1st, 2006 at 7:42 am

    Got me….

    Hey what’s the privacy policy for that email list?

    Gullible Geeks - an intrusive marketer’s dream come true - $25 per name ;-)

  26. Cristian Conti

    April 1st, 2006 at 7:50 am

    ..signup for the closed beta!

  27. Chris Yeh

    April 1st, 2006 at 8:11 am

    3D bookmarking? Ha, that’s as passe as Web 2.0. I’ve been working on 4D bookmarking for the past week, and should be able to push 5D bookmarking into Alpha.

  28. aJ

    April 1st, 2006 at 8:13 am

    Sheesh.. You got me until I saw the new URL in the title bar!

    Happy April Fools :P

  29. Oliver Steele

    April 1st, 2006 at 8:20 am

    I’ve bookmarked this with WideURL: http://wideurl.com/aitch-tee-t.....hree-slash

  30. Bill Lumbergh

    April 1st, 2006 at 8:21 am

    Um, yeah. I worked with the CEO Peter Gibbons at Initech and I’ve gotta tell you, this guys is bad news. Investors - stay away from Goop.

  31. Orli Yakuel

    April 1st, 2006 at 8:52 am

    So… I’m the only one that got a real invitation to Goop?

    http://www.hevre.co.il/images/.....438615.swf

    ;)

  32. Zoli Erdos

    April 1st, 2006 at 9:13 am

    They have a competitor named POOP.

  33. Jacob Levy

    April 1st, 2006 at 9:58 am

    Nice try Michael… Unfortunately there’s a real goop.com and its based in Atlanta :)

    Registrant:
    Vausenet
    570 Piedmont Ave, N.E.
    Atlanta, Ga 30308
    US

    Their website is not up yet but in a telephone conversation, Vausenet promised to be fully Web 2.0 compliant by the end of this week, and to have the 3D interface up before the end of April. Then they’ll implement a web2.0suck feature where the user will be sucked into the interface through their screen and be forced to interact with all the other April 1st fools days users who got suckered into believing this prank, ahaha :)

  34. BK

    April 1st, 2006 at 10:49 am

    Dammit.. you got me.. E-mail harvester!!!

  35. Duncan

    April 1st, 2006 at 11:24 am

    got me!

  36. Michael Arrington

    April 1st, 2006 at 11:26 am

    Just so everyone knows, no emails are actually being collected. :-)

  37. Jordan Meeter

    April 1st, 2006 at 2:21 pm

    Hehe, fooled me until I saw http://64.34.165.73/fool/

  38. Brian

    April 1st, 2006 at 3:19 pm

    Good one, but this one is the
    real deal    .

  39. PeteCashmore

    April 1st, 2006 at 3:21 pm

    Just so everyone knows, Email Harvester is *definitely* collecting your email addresses, AND selling them to evil corporations.

  40. thedaniel

    April 1st, 2006 at 3:56 pm

    for me, sqlonrails.org for the win today.

  41. Baris Karadogan

    April 1st, 2006 at 4:15 pm

    I heard that Goop also got funding from a Web 2.0 venture capital firm called VenturFundr, a “social venture capital” firm where investments are made depending on votes by its community members.

    Nice joke.

  42. Yosef

    April 1st, 2006 at 4:52 pm

    As I was reading this. I became sick. This whole web2.0 thing is makes me very Nauseous. Then I realized from the first comment it was a joke.

    Phew!

  43. Max

    April 1st, 2006 at 5:36 pm

    Where did my email address go?? :o

  44. Michael Parekh

    April 1st, 2006 at 5:53 pm

    You got my Automatic Web 2.0 beta app sign-up bot.

    It’s set to sign up for everything that shows up on TechCrunch. Too bad I hadn’t programmed it to ignore April 1, 2006.

    Can I have my email address back now please?

  45. blundstone

    April 1st, 2006 at 6:11 pm

    damn. got me too. aaahhhhhhhhh…

  46. sean

    April 1st, 2006 at 7:47 pm

    well done. got me… i realized it the very moment i clicked submit. damn.

  47. Peter Van Teeseling

    April 2nd, 2006 at 12:25 am

    that went as well as good be expected … goop’d me!

  48. sprockett

    April 2nd, 2006 at 12:28 am

    what the heck does goop do???

  49. Tazz

    April 2nd, 2006 at 1:36 am

    Git me up until the Mac only IE only line

  50. John

    April 2nd, 2006 at 8:00 am

    Jajjaja! Got me!

  51. Joe Hurd

    April 2nd, 2006 at 10:56 am

    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHHHHHHHAAAAAA!!!

    Well done — maybe I can hit Josh K up for $50m for my next startup…

  52. The Entrepreneurial Endeavor

    April 2nd, 2006 at 4:41 pm

    […]It seems as if Web 2.0 was the butt of a lot April fools jokes this weekend. Here are a few that I came across.[…]

  53. Tiago

    April 2nd, 2006 at 7:04 pm

    POOP is one of their competitors!

  54. Willis

    April 3rd, 2006 at 1:08 am

    30 million seed round from Kopelman? come on guys.

  55. Minti

    April 4th, 2006 at 4:31 am

    oops - got me - even signed up to be notified.

    - Clay

  56. doooh

    April 13th, 2006 at 12:19 am

    got me, last time i browse without my morning coffeeeeeee

  57. wordadmin

    February 6th, 2007 at 6:35 pm

    Hahaha )))

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