Tuesday, September 30, 2008

All Good Things...


As many of you may have already heard, My current employer, Ringside Networks is closing its doors on September 25th. On thinking back on the last eight months I find I can relate my experiences to a Star Trek Episode. As disturbing as this might sound, the episode in question was from Star Trek the Next Generation, the series finale episode called "All Good Things". In this episode you know that this is the cast's last performance, that a great team is saying goodbye. They might work together again in the future (because lord knows, there were sequels) but at this point, from their point of view, it was the end.

Ringside had an epic team of developers and a great mission: The creation of a social networking platform that could interconnect communities across the internet. In the short time we were around we fought great battles to gain the attention of the social networking community. We produced a product in just a few months capable of integrating private social communities with giants like Facebook and Myspace but in the end, the people we thought were our greatest allies walked away from the deal. All the stuff of any classic episode.

In the last days the team produced a final, innovative product which would allow any web page to become a social experience. SocialPass was a product that would enable any website owner to allow their users to "Ask their Friends" what they though about a product or service, driving new traffic to the website. Watch the video demo on SocialPass and see for yourself. What a great user experience this could have been.

If I had the chance to go back in time and do things differently as they did in the Star Trek episode this entry is named after, I don't think I would. This was a magical experience, as small start-up companies always are, and I look forward to seeing all the cast members again in the sequel.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well said Bill, well said. It was a great ride.

David said...

I'm curious to know if there is a community of users picking up and keeping Ringside going separate from the commercial endeavor? Thank you.

Unknown said...

Sadly, I don't think so. This was a full time job for me and when it ended I had to go find another.

I am not sure of the legal disposition of the code at this point. I would drop a comment on this gentleman's blog as he would know better. http://richardfriedman.blogspot.com/