Snapvine was a

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is the List of municipalities in Washington, most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the List of Unit ...

startup company A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses tha ...

that specialized in providing

voice-over-IP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables voice calls to be transmitted as ...

features for the users of

social network A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

s. The company was founded in 2005 by Joe Heitzeberg, who was the

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

of the company. In 2006, the company raised $2 million from the

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

firms

Draper Fisher Jurvetson Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) is an American venture capital firm. In January 2019, DFJ Venture, the early-stage team, spun out and formed Threshold Ventures. DFJ Growth continues to be managed by co-founder John Fisher and co-founders Mark Ba ...

and

First Round Capital First Round Capital is a US-based venture capital firm that specializes in providing seed-stage funding to technology companies. Founded by Josh Kopelman and Howard Morgan First Round typically provides seed-stage funding and focuses on po ...

. Russell Siegelman, a partner in the

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneur ...

and former

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

executive, personally invested in the company and sat on its

board of directors A board of directors is a governing body that supervises the activities of a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government agency. The powers, duties, and responsibilities of a board of directors are determined by government regulatio ...

. In July 2006, the company had six employees, 20,000 users, and had recently moved its headquarters to

Belltown, Seattle Belltown is the most densely populated neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, United States, located on the city's downtown waterfront on land that was artificially flattened as part of a regrading project. Formerly a low-rent, semi-industrial ...

. In 2007, Snapvine raised $10 million from the venture capital firm Bridgescale Partners. In September 2007, the company had grown to 18 employees, and its product had five million downloads on

Myspace Myspace (formerly stylized as MySpace, currently myspace; and sometimes my␣, with an elongated Whitespace character#Substitute images, open box symbol) is a social networking service based in the United States. Launched on August 1, 2003, it w ...

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

Bebo Bebo ( ) was an American social networking website that originally operated from 2005 until its bankruptcy in 2013. The site relaunched several times after its bankruptcy with a number of short-lived offerings, including instant messaging and ...

Hi5 hi5 is an American social networking service based in San Francisco, California. It is owned by The Meet Group. Users can create a profile and provide personal information including interests, age, photos, and hometown. Users can also send fr ...

. Celebrities

50 Cent Curtis James Jackson III (born July 6, 1975), known professionally as 50 Cent, is an American rapper, actor, and television producer. Born in Queens, a borough of New York City, Jackson began pursuing a musical career in 1996. In 1999–2000, ...

Enrique Iglesias Enrique Miguel Iglesias Preysler (; born 8 May 1975) is a Spanish singer and songwriter. He started his recording career in the mid-1990s on the Mexican label Fonovisa where he released three Spanish albums ''Enrique Iglesias (album), Enrique ...

, and

Vanessa Hudgens Vanessa Anne Hudgens ( ; born December 14, 1988) is an American actress and singer. After making her feature film debut in '' Thirteen'' (2003), Hudgens rose to fame portraying Gabriella Montez in the ''High School Musical'' film series (200 ...

used Snapvine on their Myspace pages. Its

software widget A software widget is a relatively simple and easy-to-use software application or software component, component made for one or more different software platforms. A Desk accessories, desk accessory or applet is an example of a simple, Standalone ...

was used in 200 social networks, and its voice player was invoked 22 million daily by users accessing their accounts. Snapvine monetized its product by selling banner ads, as well as voice ads users must hear as a prerequisite to making and sending their own recordings to other social media users. According to

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American global online newspaper focusing on topics regarding high tech, high-tech and Startup company, startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. I ...

, the company's competitors in 2007 were SayNow, Jangl, and

Jaxtr __NOTOC__ Jaxtr was a social communications company that melds together global calling, SMS, and social networking. Founded by Phillip Mobin and Touraj Parang in October 2005, Jaxtr uses Voice over Internet Protocol to offer competitive rates as we ...

. After experiencing a viral growth among

users, the company was acquired by the company

Whitepages A telephone directory, commonly called a telephone book, telephone address book, phonebook, or the white and yellow pages, is a listing of telephone subscribers in a geographical area or subscribers to services provided by the organization that ...

for $20 million in 2008. Whitepages founder and CEO Alex Algard said he intended to combine Snapvine's functionality with Whitepages, a site people used to obtain the contact information of people with whom they have lost contact. Algard hoped that when people searched for themselves online, they would find their Whitepages profile. They could then substitute their phone numbers with newly created Snapvine voicemail accounts, allowing users not to have to disclose their phone numbers. The majority of Snapvine's 25 employees were expected to join Whitepages at Whitepages' Seattle office after the acquisition. Snapvine ceased its operations on March 31, 2010.

References

External links

Official website
of Snapvine from the

Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by Internet Archive, an American nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California. Launched for public access in 2001, the service allows users to go "back in ...

on March 1, 2010 Defunct companies based in Seattle Computer companies established in 2005 VoIP companies of the United States American companies established in 2005 2005 establishments in Washington (state) {{US-internet-company-stub