Klout to Quietly Shut Down Cinch Q&A App

joeblau · on April 18, 2014

One day startups will learn to stop building on negative/zero/low revenue social networks. After hearing about Zynga getting diversified almost out of existence on Facebook, Dalton Caldwell being served with a "Join us or else"[1] from Facebook, and the Twitter 3rd party castration[2]; it amazes Me that people are still trying to build services on top of social platforms. These platforms are generating very little revenue relative to their valuations. If you have this amazing service that starts making money or getting notoriety, it's in the social networks best interest to stop your business and build the feature themselves.

[1] - http://daltoncaldwell.com/dear-mark-zuckerberg

[2] - https://blog.twitter.com/2012/changes-coming-to-twitter-api

sp332 · on April 18, 2014

While I agree with you in general, Klout actually launched Cinch themselves. It was supposed to increase the usefulness of their network to their users.

joeblau · on April 18, 2014

Ah I see-You're right. I thought they were a third party service. Shutting down their own products is fine. Thanks for the insight.

chimeracoder · on April 18, 2014

> 17 hours ago

> Klout notified users of its Cinch question-and-answer app in an email today that it will discontinue the service on April 18th at 12pm PST.

So.... less than 24 hours' notice? Unless there are immediate security or legal reasons (doubtful) that's rather appalling.

filmgirlcw · on April 18, 2014

When I got the email yesterday, my first reaction was "what was Cinch?" Ironically, I couldn't use Cinch to actually answer that question.