Picture yourself in 2006. Social networking was… nascent? Maybe. At the very least the whole space was still figuring itself out. Lots of different networks were available. MySpace was the biggest kid on the block. Facebook was for students only – and only students at certain schools. Bebo, Hi5, even Friendster were all big deals. You know who else was in the mix? Tagworld. And they were kind of a big deal.
Today, all most of these networks have a place. Obviously Facebook is kicking ass. MySpace still has tens of millions of users, many some of them active. Even Friendster, for instance, is insanely popular in the Philippines. Orkut, Google’s social network is very big in Brazil (though Facebook’s presence is growing there.) But what has become of Tagworld? Nothing good.
Tagworld was a big deal at one point – big enough to secure $7.5 million in VC funding form Draper Fisher Jurvetson. They differentiated via their widget platform (among other features). Tagworld morphed into “Social Project” in 2007, and was later purchased by Viacom who also had a stake in the company. Today, Social Project primarily focuses on a product called Flux, which “lets content creators build unique, customized, connected communities to grow their audience.” Whatever.
What’s interesting is that some people do seem to still visit Tagworld – to me though, the site seems effectively dead. If you visit the home page, you’re greeted with a stunning bit of verbiage (look to the right.) To me, between the lines this says: “we’re over it – if you want to keep using it, run it yourself.” Some members do seem to visit and update their profiles – many of the public profiles on the homepage have updates newer than the last 24 hours. One of these has a post that’s only 20 hours old. Interestingly though, her most recent comment says: “I will never understand tag world :[ soooo confusing" Ha!
Tagworld turned itself into Social Project, and got bought by Viacom to make a product called Flux. Ok, cool. Got it. But the fact is, Tagworld is done. Users don't know how it works. They've turned over operations to the user community. There isn't any link to "About Us." And if you look at Compete scores, they're below 15K uniques. (Forget about Social Project [thought it wasn't intended to be a destination site seemingly.]) It’s bigger than 1to10, but not real good for a social network. If anyone at Viacom is listening (unlikely) just close it down. It’s done. Stick a fork in it .
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