New York — Moving head-on with its budding social networking service Google Plus, search engine giant Google looking to bolster its social media technology, has just gobbled up a startup company Fridge to enhance Google+’s capabilities for group sharing.
New York-based Fridge, a service that offers users to create simple and pretty group-communication tool and invite friends for private sharing of conversations, photos, videos, and events had raised some curiosity when it announced on its blog that it was acquired by Google and will be folded into Google Plus, adding that its users have until 6 p.m. eastern standard time Saturday, August 20, to download and save their data.
According to reporting by Silicon Alley Insider, which mentioned that the four-member team from Fridge will initially work on Google Plus from New York, and shifting to Mountain View, Calif., in August, and Fridge founder Austin Chang told SAI that while other companies expressed desire to acquire the company, “Fridge precisely fits into Google Plus’ plan. Right now, Google+ is asymmetric. We are going to help them create shared spaces.”
Now the question that faces Google and Fridge: How can Google Plus Circles be integrated with Fridge’s group and sharing services?
“Fridge will be shutting down, but the core principles will stay on in Google+,” Chang said in a statement. He said two people from the four-member Fridge team will be moving to Mountain View, Calif., to join the Google+ team.
Here is what Fridge says on its own blog:
We are pleased to announce that the Fridge team will be joining Google!
It has been an amazing ride developing Fridge, but most important, we are very thankful to our enthusiastic community of users. We strongly believe in the group social experience, and we couldn’t think of a better place to realize our vision of bringing the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to the Web than as part of the Google Plus Project.
Fridge is closing up shop — the team will be folded into Google Plus, where we’ll continue some of our efforts. We heard you loud and clear over the weekend, so we’re expanding the time during which your Fridge data will be available for offloading. While you will no longer be able to post anything new to Fridge, you will still be able to download and save your data until Saturday, Aug. 20, at 6 p.m. EST. After that, in accordance with our privacy policy, we will delete all user data.
We look forward to continuing the vision of creating fresh and exciting social group experiences for users across the web.
Keep on keeping it fresh from Team Fridge, and see you on Google Plus.
Image courtesy of Flickr, gilderic.
Fridge was formulated to simplify the ad-hoc creation of online groups where members can share posts, photos, videos, discussions and text messages, both on desktop computers and mobile devices.
Interestingly, a major Google+ element is its Circles feature, which is designed to let members easily create multiple sets of friends and contacts — like family, work, college buddies or softball league teammates — in order to share different content with each one, as opposed to sharing everything with everyone.
Well, now with this acquisition it seems like Google has definite plans to make G+ more and more like Facebook, instead of the tech-nerd hangout it currently is.
“The Fridge team shares our vision of bringing the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to the web, and we are excited that they will be joining Google,” Google said in a statement.
No wonder, along with the acquisition, Fridge brings to the G+ table some exuberant audience:
Fridge currently has 40,000 monthly uniques. More than 20,000 groups have been formed, where users can share videos, instant messages, pictures, polls and events with close friends.
Moreover, Google+, which was unveiled in late June, is in a beta version and available only to people that members invite. However, it is growing pretty fast, visits to Google+ topped 1.8 million the week ending July 16, up 283 percent compared with the prior week and up 821 percent compared with the week ending July 2, according to Hitwise.
Ultimately, groups would be built around interests, rather than one-to-one connections, in theory leading to a deeper interaction. There is also a promotional video detailing Fridge’s technology, which also should give a good idea the road Google+ is determined to travel:
{iframe width=”620″ height=”390″ align=”top”}http://www.youtube.com/embed/TRYntzWLJ7Q{/iframe}
TechCrunch is reporting that Fridge had raised $800,000 from angel investors such as Mitch Kapor, Naval Ravikant, Keith Rabois, Jim Young, Jeremy Stoppelman, Jameson Hsu, Geoff Ralston, Jason Sander and Joshua Schachter.