Plinky Goes Kablooie
Wade Roush4/7/10
Thing Labs, the California startup that launched both the Plinky prompting service and the Brizzly social media reader with support from Waltham, MA-based Polaris Venture Partners, announced late Tuesday night that it plans to stop updating Plinky, and that it may eventually shut the site down. In an e-mail to users, Thing Labs said its developers have been so busy improving Brizzly, which presents simplified views of Facebook and Twitter updates, that they haven’t had time to work on Plinky, which provided daily prompts to help users write social-media updates. “We put a lot of work into [Plinky], and we think it’s a great site,” the Thing Labs notice said. “At the same time, we feel we have much more to offer with Brizzly than we ever could have with Plinky.” Xconomy profiled Plinky in February 2009, calling it “the cure for blank-slate syndrome.”
Wade Roush is Xconomy's chief correspondent and editor of Xconomy San Francisco. You can e-mail him at wroush@xconomy.com or follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/wroush.
Michael
4/9/10 11:39 pm
This is a classic case of VCs throwing money at tech celebrities without sticking to basic and proven business fundamentals. Even before launch, Plinky was hyped as something “amazing” by some of the “top web innovators” in the valley. As was proven by the market (yeah, it is real), it turned out to be one of the least viable web apps/services (?) to hit the scene. The pitch for this must have rivaled the surrealism of Avatar in dazzling those unlucky investors.
It is a bummer as a “normal” entrepreneur to see such hubris by well known VCs in our region. The Boston area has great talent with better ideas. Look closer and you will find clever products (yes, web ones too) in the works by visionary, smart people. No need to go west after valley celebs.