When Thoof launched in July 2007 a lot of people gave it a good chance of success despite the fact that it was entering into the dreaded personalized news space. Sure, the market was littered with failed startups, but Thoof was founded by former Revver cofounder Ian Clarke, and was well backed by Austin Ventures, Ron Conway and others.
Thoof aimed to deliver tailored news by looking at what you click on, and nothing else (vote buttons and other tools weren’t a true indicator of intent, Clarke argued). From our first post on Thoof:
Thoof determines what you like based solely on what stories you click on to read. Asking for specific feedback, like voting or rating of stories, is too much to ask of users, Clarke says, noting that only a very small percentage of people who watched videos on Revver ever actually rated them. By analyzing what you tend to click on, Thoof will return results that it thinks you are more likely to click on than others. The result, over time, is a perfectly tailored news page for an individual.
The site peaked in October, but by January the wheels were coming off the car. We heard at that time that the company would continue to limp along and see what happened. But in the last couple of days the site has been redirected to Reddit, and Clarke officially moved on to another project in April.
We’ve asked Clarke and Austin Ventures for a comment, but it’s pretty clear Thoof is in the deadpool, joining competitors like Searchfox (deadpool, assets acquired by Yahoo), Findory (deadpool), Spotback (change in strategy) and Feeds 2.0 (no idea what their status is, site is live).
god, Thoof sounds so stupid.
Tag to link “deadpool” is wrong… pretty ironic that it goes to a 404 page… purposeful?
Cause it’s going to deadpool.com you dope. Take off the .com.
Just clicking on stuff is not enough, when they got to the story did they like it or dislike it? just because a shit load of traffic ends up at a particular post you cant just say it is popular.
sent from: fav.or.it [FID950818]
I used thoof for a few months and really liked the concept of not having to click buttons for the service to know what I liked. (It should be noted somewhere that if you didn’t like something you could/would have to click some sort of “Not Good” button to negate the effects of you clicking the link in the first place.)
Aside from the poor layout on the site, my biggest problem was that there wasn’t any good content submitted. From early on, it was abused by bloggers self promoting their crap. There wasn’t really any way to look at only recent stories, so I spent most of my time on it wading through s**t I had already seen and didn’t like–it didn’t seem to help that I would click “Ignore” and/or “Block tag ‘Celebrities’”.
Name killed them. It totally sucks.
of course.
It all starts with a good name.
it’s hard to sell, if the name simply really sucks.
Yahoo! did what it intended with the SearchFox acquisition, in fact, which was to integrate and scale the technology as a platform service across the network.
It was first tested as the My Yahoo! “Top Picks” module (http://mashable...ahoo-top-picks/) and then evolved to the COKE service that now optimizes content based on user behaviors (http://www.pcwo...front_page.html).
What started as a personalized RSS reader graduated to a really powerful technology service. SearchFox, in my mind, is actually an interesting startup success story.
Any particular reason??? of redirecting to reddit???
This space is tough (believe me!), but I think its important that entrepreneurs try and give people choice when it comes to news. Access to high quality, credible news is a cornerstone of democracy. Thoof may have failed, but we need continued innovation in the space and entrepreneurs who are willing to take risks to help keep our communities informed. Sure, its a dreaded space, but if you don’t enter the arena, you cannot fight!
How about a headline for this one. “Thoof goes poof! Another Personalized News Site Bites The Dust (and nobody notices)”
Poof!
I mean, Thoof!
It disappeared!
And you did not mention rojo.com which is also changing, they recently sent me an email to let me know that I should export my feeds as the page is closing down to change “strategy”.
Ok, so this guy started revver (bombed), then foof (bombed) but has moved onto another project. For deadpool sake please say which lucky new VC’s have been spending on Clarke for this next one.
His first company, Uprizer, bombed even worse. And while we’re at it, his free project, Freenet is also a total failure.
In what way is Freenet a failure? Such a failure that Google recently pumped cash into it, and its got an active and growing userbase?
personalised news is still the way forward… just because someone hasnt cracked it yet, doesnt make the concept obsolete.
When Thoof decided to pay people to blog about them via PayPerPost, I never went back after that.
Wish there was a way to blacklist all sites that use PayPerPost. Can you make it happen Matt??? Thanks in advance
Come on now. You said people were giving this thing a chance of success. You crazy kids and your funny cigarettes. For starters, they named themselves after what sounds like the sound effect for a Web 2.0 Company hitting the dirt.
THOOF!!! HOLY CRASHING START-UPS BATMAN!!!
That was the crappiest site of them all. Total and complete crap
Michael, I have to give you the big “huh?” with regards to this quote:
“…a lot of people gave it a good chance of success despite the fact that it was entering into the dreaded personalized news space”
Look back at the comments posted on your stories about the Thoof launch, and I think you’ll find a universal panning of the concept and site even back then. Not sure why you guys at TechCrunch thought it stood a chance.
Quick review of founder’s track record:
- Freenet (bombed)
- Uprizer (bombed)
- Revver (bombed)
- Dijjer (bombed)
- Thoof (bombed)
Do VC’s care about track records? Will this guy get funded again? If he does, maybe that gives us all hope that multiple failures without success isn’t the end of the world.
@Brian, Freenet is still very much around, alive, and successful, just a few months ago Google pumped quite a bit of cash into them.
Uprizer was sold in 2003.
Revver was also sold, although certainly it wasn’t a good exit for the founders.
Dijjer wasn’t a commercial venture, it was open source, and its still around.
Typically VCs are more interested in whether someone learned from their past mistakes, than whether they’ve made mistakes in the past. Startups are a high risk business, less than 1 in 10 succeed.
As Fred Brooks said, “Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment”. We can’t all be fortunate enough to strike gold on our first attempt.
it’s too early for this kind of stuff. not surprised to see.
Funny, just searched digg type of websites to post news about our new startup and found this article. I’m lucky…
Thoof………
No surprise here. Does anyone remember this shameful video making it to the front page of digg:
http://www.yout...h?v=tt8c8LCkxew
lol, never seen that before, 9 views… not exactly viral.
sent from: fav.or.it [FID988699]
@Nick, the original version (not the video dart spam version) of this video got over 50k views:
http://www.yout...h?v=ytfDp_dPCMk