Wallop is one of many dozens of APIs that Microsoft opened up last year. At the time, the company was interested in licensing the technologies to companies that had secured financing. I had contacted their MSFT IP Ventures division regarding a business opportunity that would employ Wallop.
Note that at this time, I was increasingly made redundant at my then employer, AskMen, who was acquired by IGN (IGN went on to be acquired by Fox Interactive Media, making me totally useless… alas, I digress). Point is, I was looking for something to do, and since all roads all my old employer proved to be dead ends, the notion of leaving and building a company around a MSFT-built API seemed like a fit, as I could handle product development, marketing, sales and business development in months 1-3, at which point I could secure financing in month 4 if necessary. The idea was: until month 3 or 4, we would not really know what direction the company would go in, the same way that it tooks Friendster and MySpace months to realize their identity.
Suffice to say, MSFT politely declined because I had no financing. They wanted that in place, and in all fairness, I do / did not blame them… who one earth were I to suggest otherwise?
Eventually, despite their good intentions, the MSFT IP Ventures fizzled. Until now, I guess.
Today, MSFT announced that it was spinning off the product into a separate company:
Microsoft Corp. said it’s spun off a new social networking company called Wallop Inc., which was developed by its Microsoft Research division [and] will be located in San Francisco, (…) led by CEO Karl Jacob, and has received Series A financing from Bay Partnes. It will launch later this year, according to the Redmond software giant.
Wallop will compete against other online social networking Web sites such as Friendster and MySpace, but will be unique, according to Wallop officials.
“What is exciting to us is Wallop’s vision to turn social computing on its head and significantly change how we look at this sector,” said Eric Chin, venture partner at Bay Partners and Wallop board member, in a statement.
The company, located in San Francisco’s South Park district, is hiring. According to Wallop’s Web site (www.wallop.com), the company is looking for “a killer designer, rockstar engineer, marketing maven, or business development guru.”
Looks like they found their man, business plan to come.
Click here for my earlier post on MSFT’s half-effective effort in opening up their API.
Click here to learn more about Wallop.
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