Collactive Inc. was an
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
-based privately held start-up company which marketed software designed to influence ratings on sites which allow users to rate articles or other items. Collactive launched publicly in May 2007, with US$2 million in startup funding from American venture firm
Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital is an American venture capital firm. The firm is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, and specializes in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. , Sequoia's total a ...
.
Products
Collactive main product was a system designed to influence ratings on key sites which measure the popularity of items on the Internet. The system had two main components, the APB component that allows an individual to create and distribute a "call for action" webpage, and the "Web Assistant", installed on a user's computer, which helped APB participants by automating the process of logging in, voting or commenting according to the previously created APB.
Controversy
Like its earlier Blue Service Team-released
Blue Frog
Blue Frog was a freely-licensed anti-spam tool produced by Blue Security Inc. and operated as part of a community-based system which tried to persuade spammers to remove community members' addresses from their mailing lists by automating the com ...
, Collactive's software was accused of being unethical.
See also
*
Megaphone desktop tool
The Megaphone desktop tool was a Windows "action alert" tool developed by Give Israel Your United Support (GIYUS) and distributed by World Union of Jewish Students, World Jewish Congress, The Jewish Agency for Israel, World Zionist Organization, S ...
, an earlier version of Collactive's "Web Assistant" used for political lobbying.
*
Vote-stuffing
Press coverage
"New Web 2.0 App Prompts Web 2.0 Elite To See Democracy As Spam" Wired blog entry by
Ryan Singel
Ryan Singel is a San Francisco-based blogger and journalist covering tech business, tech policy, civil liberty and privacy issues. His work has appeared extensively in ''Wired.com'', and Singel co-founded the Threat Level blog with journalist and c ...
.
"Web Sites' Lists Of 'Most Viewed' Too Easy to Game?" Wall Street Journal.
InfoWorld
"Collactive seeks to overwhelm Digg, Reddit with interested stories" Venture Beat.
"Anti-spam tech reborn as web activist tool" The Register.
"Spammer Slammer Targets Politics" Wired.
References
Software companies of Israel
Privately held companies of Israel
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