Activeweave
Encyclopedia
Activeweave, Inc. is a Silicon Valley
-based startup, operating in the attention management
and social web
arenas. It was acquired in April 2008 by Buzzlogic, Inc.
service, revolves around and extends the notion of social annotation for web sites. Web annotation
s were pioneered in 1999 by the company Third Voice, with a service allowing its users to:
Lacking a filtering mechanism that would have allowed users to pick whose annotations they would see, Third Voice was perceived as intrusive, spam-like graffiti
, and consequently was fought by site owners, and largely ignored by users overwhelmed by the amount of public commentary on popular sites. It shut down in 2001.
One of Activeweave's significant departures from Third Voice's approach was to base the sharing and visibility of annotations on an underlying social network
. Activeweave also innovated in terms of user experience by ensuring annotations were displayed in an unobtrusive manner, not interfering with the visited sites:
Subsequently, Activeweave released BlogRovR, that built on the same technology but made the system read-only, with annotations being supplied implicitly by blog posts relevant to the web page being viewed by users.
and Marc A. Meyer. In early 2006, the company raised a round of seed investment
funding from business angels
, including Esther Dyson
and Eric Di Benedetto.
and Internet Explorer
browsers to provide its users with always-on, in-place access to information relevant to the page they are currently viewing.
Stickis
, launched in November 2006, primarily focuses on tight-knit communities, and lets its users collaborate by annotating web pages as they browse. It also enables users to discover, read and comment on their peers’ annotations, either in-place or through a searchable, centralized repository that exposes the shared accumulated knowledge to participants in a form equivalent to a multi-author blog.
BlogRovR, launched in April 2007, helps individuals manage the attention they pay to massive amounts of information hosted by blogs and mainstream media. Thus it participates in stemming the potential attention crisis caused by the accelerated growth in the quantity of content available for consumption online.
BlogRovR exploits the same underlying technology as Stickis
to continuously overlay stories, contextually relevant to the web page currently being viewed, right into the browser. It allows each individual user to select blog
s and mainstream media
sources they trust, and automatically picks relevant stories from those sources, as well as closely related sources. This allows users to reduce the time they spend systematically reading blog posts, while ensuring that those same posts will be delivered, precisely when they are relevant to the material currently being viewed, thus more likely to be meaningful and useful.
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
-based startup, operating in the attention management
Attention management
Attention management refers to models and tools for supporting the management of attention at the individual or at the collective level , and at the short-term or at a longer term ....
and social web
Social Web
The social Web is a set of social relations that link people through the World Wide Web. The Social web encompasses how websites and software are designed and developed in order to support and foster social interaction. These online social interactions form the basis of much online activity...
arenas. It was acquired in April 2008 by Buzzlogic, Inc.
Background
Activeweave's original positioning, through the StickisStickis
Stickis is a web service developed and offered by Activeweave, Inc., and one of the pioneers in the social annotation, attention management and ambient social networking spaces.-Technology:...
service, revolves around and extends the notion of social annotation for web sites. Web annotation
Web annotation
A web annotation is an online annotation associated with a web resource, typically a web page. With a Web annotation system, a user can add, modify or remove information from a Web resource without modifying the resource itself...
s were pioneered in 1999 by the company Third Voice, with a service allowing its users to:
- Author comments and tie those comments to any web page.
- Have their own comments as well as others' be automatically retrieved for display (in a fashion similar to Post-it notePost-it noteA Post-it note is a piece of stationery with a re-adherable strip of adhesive on the back, designed for temporarily attaching notes to documents and other surfaces. Although now available in a wide range of colours, shapes, and sizes, Post-it notes are most commonly a square, canary yellow in colour...
s) and reading, whenever visiting any annotated page.
Lacking a filtering mechanism that would have allowed users to pick whose annotations they would see, Third Voice was perceived as intrusive, spam-like graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....
, and consequently was fought by site owners, and largely ignored by users overwhelmed by the amount of public commentary on popular sites. It shut down in 2001.
One of Activeweave's significant departures from Third Voice's approach was to base the sharing and visibility of annotations on an underlying social network
Social network
A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
. Activeweave also innovated in terms of user experience by ensuring annotations were displayed in an unobtrusive manner, not interfering with the visited sites:
- No screen space was reserved or used by the service's browser add-on on pages with no annotations.
- When annotations from connected users are present, only a small (and re-sizable) tray showing annotation abstracts is shown.
- The full annotations are only shown when the user selects an abstract.
Subsequently, Activeweave released BlogRovR, that built on the same technology but made the system read-only, with annotations being supplied implicitly by blog posts relevant to the web page being viewed by users.
History
Activeweave was co-founded in late 2005 by software entrepreneurs Jean SiniJean Sini
Jean Sini is a San Francisco-based author, computer scientist, software executive and entrepreneur of French descent, noted for his active role in mobile computing standardization efforts, and profiled for his participation in the web 2.0 movement and ecosystem...
and Marc A. Meyer. In early 2006, the company raised a round of seed investment
Seed money
Seed money, sometimes known as seed funding, friends and family funding or angel funding , is a securities offering whereby one or more parties that have some connection to a new enterprise invest the funds necessary to start the business so that it has enough funds to sustain itself for a period...
funding from business angels
Angel investor
An angel investor or angel is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity...
, including Esther Dyson
Esther Dyson
Esther Dyson is a former journalist and Wall Street technology analyst who is a leading angel investor, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and commentator focused on breakthrough innovation in healthcare, government transparency, digital technology, biotechnology, and space...
and Eric Di Benedetto.
Technology
Activeweave develops a contextual and social web overlay technology. In conjunction with a traditional web service, Activeweave leverages the add-on it built for the Firefox, FlockFlock (web browser)
Flock was a web browser that specialized in providing social networking and Web 2.0 facilities built into its user interface.Earlier versions of Flock used the Gecko HTML rendering engine by Mozilla....
and Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
browsers to provide its users with always-on, in-place access to information relevant to the page they are currently viewing.
Services
Activeweave offers consumers two distinct services, both currently in public beta:Stickis
Stickis
Stickis is a web service developed and offered by Activeweave, Inc., and one of the pioneers in the social annotation, attention management and ambient social networking spaces.-Technology:...
, launched in November 2006, primarily focuses on tight-knit communities, and lets its users collaborate by annotating web pages as they browse. It also enables users to discover, read and comment on their peers’ annotations, either in-place or through a searchable, centralized repository that exposes the shared accumulated knowledge to participants in a form equivalent to a multi-author blog.
BlogRovR, launched in April 2007, helps individuals manage the attention they pay to massive amounts of information hosted by blogs and mainstream media. Thus it participates in stemming the potential attention crisis caused by the accelerated growth in the quantity of content available for consumption online.
BlogRovR exploits the same underlying technology as Stickis
Stickis
Stickis is a web service developed and offered by Activeweave, Inc., and one of the pioneers in the social annotation, attention management and ambient social networking spaces.-Technology:...
to continuously overlay stories, contextually relevant to the web page currently being viewed, right into the browser. It allows each individual user to select blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
s and mainstream media
Mainstream media
Mainstream media are those media disseminated via the largest distribution channels, which therefore represent what the majority of media consumers are likely to encounter...
sources they trust, and automatically picks relevant stories from those sources, as well as closely related sources. This allows users to reduce the time they spend systematically reading blog posts, while ensuring that those same posts will be delivered, precisely when they are relevant to the material currently being viewed, thus more likely to be meaningful and useful.
Awards
In June 2007, BlogRovR gained the status of recommended Firefox add-on. BlogRovR was also nominated in 2007 as a finalist to the Webware 100 in the browsing category.See also
- Mozilla Firefox
- List of Firefox extensions
- Social Software
- Web annotationWeb annotationA web annotation is an online annotation associated with a web resource, typically a web page. With a Web annotation system, a user can add, modify or remove information from a Web resource without modifying the resource itself...
- BloggingBlogA blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...