Once the brainchild of Microsoft Research, Wallop joined the fray of social networks back in 2006 when the company’s CEO told the world that it wanted to compete with the likes of Facebook and MySpace, but do so by providing users with an unlimited capacity to upload digital media and have a revenue model that didn’t revolve around advertising, but instead it would revolve around the sale of “self-expression items.”
At that time, the company believed that everything was in place and it was ready to confront the world of social networks with a service that could easily compete on the same level as Facebook and MySpace.
Evidently, it was wrong.
Although there hasn’t been an official statement made by the company explicitly saying Wallop is dead, the company’s site now features a blurb saying site use will end September 18 and users will no longer be allowed to access their accounts after that time.
Dear Wallop.com Member,
Thank you for being part of the Wallop beta social networking site. We really appreciate your feedback and support. The beta period will end on September 18th, 2008 – after that date you will no longer be able to access your account.
Please check out our apps Cool Cards and Party On! On Facebook.
Thanks again,
The Wallop.com Team
An email was sent to the company’s press address to see what would come of it after that date, but the email address was removed from the company’s bank of addresses — another telltale sign that the service is dead.
Wallop will still live on in two Facebook applications though. On the company’s site, it’s still promoting its Cool Cards app, which lets Facebook users send animated greetings using their own audio, pictures, and video to friends. It’s also promoting its Party On! app, which lets Facebook users send animated party invitations to their friends.
But as a social network, Wallop has entered the deadpool.
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Another innovative, mission critical social networking related company is “revalued”.
This is the first step of the SuperGUI concept dying. Simplicity just works.
maybe a chance if it had a better domain name and logo?
MyLocator.com
Maybe…a chance if they would have had a distribution model? In 2006, facebook, myspace, bebo, hi5, linkedin - they all had tons of members & plenty of virality…wallop had nothing.
Besides which, Microsoft’s Q&A site, windows live qna, is anemic at best, and a q&a site = a social network…dilluting your chances by spreading out niche features across multiple sites & brands hurts your ability to create network effects. Oops.
i had a beta try out of wallop. the problem with it was that although nice looking, it was just too complicated and confusing for the average user. simplicity is key and they tried to incorporate too many things and make it too fancy at one time. the result is an overwhelming GUI which cut out the main objective of why it existed in the first place i.e. social networking with self expression.
This is what techcrunch should do! {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/rM2Cdn6fcN_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”This is what techcrunch should do! ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/zSnJiNRwYJ”}}}
Dam Karl Jacob!
He was trying to make this happen for the last few years..
Almost made it Karl
What’s in name, but WTF is Wallop ? … they could have survived if they would have come up with better name
Wasn’t this is the “flash based social network” … ?
I always found the UI to be really messy because you could move any element anywhere, like a web-top, but it very quickly got filled up with crapola.
Meh. Another one bites the dust.
Hey Karl
Incubatin’ for the big guys SUCKS!!! Do your own thing next time.
Wallop always looked nice but the interface was horrible. They also never seemed to add anything to the site, the last update seems to be over a year ago. If they had actually developed some things to do on the site like games it might have been more of a success.
Yes i agree with you.The interfacing has some problems when i tried.
It has been hard to make a living out of mobile social networking.
Are we really surprised? Another of the Big Guys start up a huge “X-killer” project, fails to support it after the public launch, then quietly closes it down a few years later.
The people involved in these projects are like the Special Sauce for Failure Soup.
Even worse, this casts a bad light on the company, as end users will be less likely to use “beta” products that Microsoft / Yahoo makes, because they’ll still be reeling from the bad taste in their mouth from the *last* canned project. Anyone here remember Microsoft Max? Sheesh.
Someone at these companies needs to put their foot down and say, “Once you go live with a project of this magnitude, *YOU* are obligated to support it — indefinitely. So don’t fuck it up.”
How many awful ‘beta’ projects would we see steaming out of Silicon Valley then?
Self-Expression?
You enjoy your own self-expression, who else care?
aren’t you going to add Lehman Brother to the deadpool?