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MediaLab acquires messaging app Kik, expanding its app portfolio
Popular messaging app Kik is, indeed, “here to stay” following an acquisition by the Los Angeles-based multimedia holding company, MediaLab.
It echoes the same message from Kik’s chief executive Tim Livingston last week when he rebuffed earlier reports that the company would shut down amid an ongoing battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Livingston had tweeted that Kik had signed a letter-of-intent with a “great company,” but that it was “not a done deal.”
Now we know the the company: MediaLab. In a post on Kik’s blog on Friday the MediaLab said that it has “finalized an agreement” to acquire Kik Messenger.
“Kik is one of those amazing places that brings us back to those early aspirations,” the blog post read. “Whether it be a passion for an obscure manga or your favorite football team, Kik has shown an incredible ability to provide a platform for new friendships to be forged through your mobile phone.”
MediaLab is a holding company that owns several other mobile properties, including anonymous social network Whisper and mixtape app DatPiff. In acquiring Kik, the holding company is expanding its mobile app portfolio.
MediaLab said it has “some ideas” for developing Kik going forwards, including making the app faster and reducing the amount of unwanted messages and spam bots. The company said it will introduce ads “over the coming weeks” in order to “cover our expenses” of running the platform.
Buying the Kik messaging platform adds another social media weapon to the arsenal for MediaLab and its chief executive, Michael Heyward .
Heyward was an early star of the budding Los Angeles startup community with the launch of the anonymous messaging service, Whisper nearly 8 years ago. At the time, the company was one of a clutch of anonymous apps — including Secret and YikYak — that raised tens of millions of dollars to offer online iterations of the confessional journal, the burn book, and the bathroom wall (respectively).
In 2017, TechCrunch reported that Whisper underwent significant layoffs to stave off collapse and put the company on a path to profitability.
At the time Whisper had roughly 20 million monthly active users across its app and website, which the company was looking to monetize through programmatic advertising, rather than brand-sponsored campaigns that had provided some of the company’s revenue in the past. Through widgets, the company had an additional 10 million viewers of its content per-month using various widgets and a reach of around 250 million through Facebook and other social networks on which it published posts.
People familiar with the company said at the time that it was seeing gross revenues of roughly $1 million and was going to hit $12.5 million in revenue for that calendar year. By 2018 that revenue was expected to top $30 million, according to sources at the time.
The flagship Whisper app let people post short bits of anonymous text and images that other folks could like or comment about. Heyward intended it to be a way for people to share more personal and intimate details — to be a social network for confessions and support rather than harassment.
The idea caught on with investors and Whisper managed to raise $61 million from investors including Sequoia, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Shasta Ventures . Whisper’s last round was a $36 million Series C back in 2014.
Fast forward to 2018 when Secret had been shut down for three years while YikYak also went bust — selling off its engineering team to Square for around $1 million. Whisper, meanwhile, seemingly set up MediaLab as a holding company for its app and additional assets that Heyward would look to roll up. The company filed registration documents in California in June 2018.
According to the filings, Susan Stone, a partner with the investment firm Sierra Wasatch Capital, is listed as a director for the company.
Heyward did not respond to a request for comment.
Zack Whittaker contributed reporting for this article.
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Trill Project aims to be a safe community for people to express their true selves
Trill Project, founded by three high school girls, recently launched out of private beta to help people safely express themselves online. For those unfamiliar with the word “trill,” it’s a combination of “true” and “real.” An investor described it to me as a positive Yik Yak .
Trill Project began as a community for teenagers, especially for transgender teens who felt like they didn’t have a safe space to be themselves. It has since expanded it to a platform for everyone to express anything from their struggles with addiction, mental illnesses to workplace issues.
“We’re reinventing the narrative of social networking and we kind of elevate social media by being private and anonymous,” Trill Project co-founder Georgia Messinger told TechCrunch over the phone.
On Trill Project, everything is anonymous (there are no usernames) and monitored by 50 moderators around the clock. Trill Project also has machine learning algorithms as work to learn from reported posts to be able to recognize problematic posts in the future. And if someone feels unsafe or thinks someone has figured out their trill identity, they can always just change it.
In addition to wanting to prevent bullying and harassment, Trill Project wants to be helpful to those suggesting they want to harm themselves or those reporting being hurt by others. That’s why Trill Project has partnered with non-profit organizations that specifically support people experiencing mental health crises.
Trill Project will always be free to the users, but the idea is to possibly license its machine learning algorithms, sell ad space and sponsorships for communities, Trill Project co-founder Ari Sokolov told TechCrunch.
Anonymous social networks, of course, are nothing new. Startups like Whisper, Secret and Yik Yak have all tried and arguably failed.
“People have tried before but as teenagers in particular, we really are closer to our users,” Messinger said. “It gives us access and insight those companies have been lacking.”
Trill Project is currently participating in Founders Bootcamp, an accelerator for high schoolers. Through the accelerator, Trill Project has received $50,000 in funding. Next month, Trill Project intends to start raising a seed round.
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Anonymous app Whisper lays off 20% of staff to survive
Startups are dying all over the place as last year’s investment cool-off leads many to run out of cash. But Whisper refuses to race into the graveyard like fellow anonymous social apps Secret and Yik Yak. Meet The Startups Vying For The Crunchie For Fastest Rising Startup Of 2015
The 9th Annual Crunchies are almost upon us. On February 8, people from some of the best and brightest startups around will descend upon San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House to take part in an event that’s best described as the Oscars of startups and technology. The Guardian Publishes A Pretty Amazing Whisper “Clarification”
The Guardian, the British newspaper that published a series of articles last fall (starting with this one) about anonymous social media app Whisper, issued a “clarification” today about those stories. The Guardian post gets pretty nitpicky and specific, to the extent that it’s tough to parse if (like me) you haven’t read those stories recently. But here’s the… Read More
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Few Winners In Anonymous Social Networking, And Secret’s Not One Of Them
Is anonymous social networking a flash-in-pan trend? A winner-take-all category? Which of the anonymous social networking apps around today are still thriving, and which are practically dead? These questions come to mind today as one of the leading companies in the “anonymous social” category, Secret, revamped its application, borrowing ideas from popular apps like Yik Yak and… Read More
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