Pushnote, a social media platform that gave users the opportunity to comment on any site with just one click, shut down its website this morning.
Last year, actor and technology enthusiast Stephen Fry gave his vocal support (and money) to the start-up, but admitted he wasn’t expecting a return.
The Pushnote browser button turned green when a user visited a web page where other people had commented using the service. It turned red when new comments from user’s contact list were added, encouraging almost real-time discussion. It could also post directly to Twitter and Facebook.
https://twitter.com/stephenfry/status/25608865571672065″ data-datetime=”2011-01-13T17:43:24+00:00
The site’s founder and chief executive, John Leaver, has now shut down the service. Stephen Fry previously admitted he did not expect to make money from Pushnote.
“It was a difficult decision, not least because we loved the great content shared on Pushnote and we’re sorry we can no longer support the site,” reads the farewell note on the website.
“As an innovative social platform, Pushnote was always a bit of an experiment. It was a lot of fun and we made a lot of friends, but our passions have led us elsewhere.”
The statement concluded: “It’s a wonderfully innovative time for the web and we hope you’re enjoying it as much as we are.”
Are you fluent in the language of the Internet? Take our quiz!
Thoma Bravo agrees to acquire Darktrace for $5.32 billion in cash, delivering some welcome news…
Customer adoption of AI services embedded in cloud services continues to deliver results for Microsoft,…
TikTok's 'secret source' algorithm is so core to ByteDance, it would rather shut down US…
After relocating from California to Texas in 2020, Oracle's Larry Ellison now reveals plan to…
Share price hit after Meta admits heavy AI spending plans, after posting strong first quarter…
For third time Google delays phase-out of third-party Chrome cookies after pushback from industry and…
View Comments
Shame really as whilst some news sites let you login and comment using Facebook, many still require you to have a plethora of logins and accounts which can be a pain to keep track of
"widely criticised for the lack of a facility for websites to filter or remove those comments"
That was the whole point, really, hence Fry's use of the word "democratic". It was a great idea. Google tried it with Sidebar, but that project was cancelled also. hypothes.is are trying something similar for science claims.
It seems like a good idea. Are there any Pushnote alternatives out there? The Wikipedia page for "web annotation" lists some similar services but nothing seems quite the same.
What a great idea! I think I shall create a new startup.....
So... is the pushnote source code available?
Interesting piece here entitled Stephen Fry, The Old Man Of The Sea & A Man Called Harry which seems to me to sum up Stephen very well. http://stephanjmyers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/stephen-fry-old-man-of-sea-man-called.html
It’s a wonderfully innovative time for the web
And when hasnt it been?
Never even heard of Pushnote until reading this article right now.
It sounds kind of like that old Google sidebar plugin from some years back... what was it called? Wave? or Buzz? There was some other thing like this even before that, it had some cute interface where you had people's avatars hanging out on web pages.
“widely criticised for the lack of a facility for websites to filter or remove those comments”
That was the whole point, really, hence Fry’s use of the word “democratic”.
-----------------
Unfortunately another apt word is anarchaic.
Pushnote never had the resources to be able to police itself so anyone could go around making any kind of comment about any site (homophobic rants attached to LGBT sites for example).
20 sensible comments could easily be spoilt by 1 troll comment with no redress or ability to alter. That is NOT democracy.