Jelly was a Q&A platform app which was created by Jelly Industries, a search-engine company founded and led by

Biz Stone Christopher Isaac "Biz" Stone (born March 10, 1974) is an American entrepreneur who is a co-founder of Twitter, among other technology companies. Stone was the creative director at Xanga from 1999 to 2001. Stone co-founded Jelly, with Ben Finkel ...

, one of

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

's co-founders. In March 2017, Jelly was acquired by

Pinterest Pinterest is an American image sharing and social media service designed to enable saving and discovery of information (specifically "ideas") on the internet using images, and on a smaller scale, animated GIFs and videos, in the form of pinboard ...

for an undisclosed amount. Jelly differentiated itself from other Q&A platforms such as

Quora Quora () is a social question-and-answer website based in Mountain View, California. It was founded on June 25, 2009, and made available to the public on June 21, 2010. Users can collaborate by editing questions and commenting on answers that ...

and

ChaCha Cha-Cha, Cha Cha, ChaCha or Chacha may refer to: Music * Cha-cha-cha (dance), a dance of Cuban origin * Cha-cha-cha (music), a genre of Cuban music * ''Cha Cha'' (album), a 1978 album by Herman Brood & His Wild Romance * ''Cha Cha'' (soundtrack), ...

by relying on visual imagery to steer people to getting better answers from within and outside their social networks. In particular, it encouraged people to use photos to ask questions.

History

'' AllThingsD'' reported on March 28, 2013, that, according to sources,

co-founder

was close to launching a native mobile app called Jelly. On April 1, 2013, Stone wrote the company's first blog post, giving only vague information about the product. A ''

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately $ ...

'' writer inferred that the product would be targeted at do-gooders on the go. Other news publications also published speculation about the app. In May 2013, while still in stealth mode, Jelly raised

Series A funding A series A round (also known as series A financing or series A investment) is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exchan ...

from

Spark Capital Spark Capital is a venture capital firm in the United States, responsible for early-stage funding startups of consumer, commerce, FinTech, software, frontier, and media sectors. It has branches in San Francisco, Boston, and New York City. Hi ...

, SV Angel,

Square In Euclidean geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90- degree angles, π/2 radian angles, or right angles). It can also be defined as a rectangle with two equal-length a ...

CEO

Jack Dorsey Jack Patrick Dorsey (born November 19, 1976) is an American Internet entrepreneur and programmer who is a co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, Inc., as well as a co-founder and the CEO and chairperson of Block, Inc., the developer of the Squa ...

Reid Hoffman Reid Garrett Hoffman (born August 5, 1967) is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. Hoffman was the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily for prof ...

Al Gore Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Gore was the Democratic no ...

, Bono, and others. The app release was announced, thereby bringing Jelly out of stealth mode, on January 7, 2014. The announcement was picked up by much of the technology press and mainstream press. Stone explained to ''

'' that the primary goal of Jelly was not to help people asking questions but to improve empathy among people answering questions by making them feel helpful to people around them. In an interview with ''

Bloomberg News Bloomberg News (originally Bloomberg Business News) is an international news agency headquartered in New York City and a division of Bloomberg L.P. Content produced by Bloomberg News is disseminated through Bloomberg Terminals, Bloomberg Tele ...

'', Stone said that he never intended to create a company with Jelly, and that it was largely accidental. The app was reviewed by Rachel Metz for ''

Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editorially independent of the university. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "The" in ...

''. ''The Next Web'' published advice for how brands could use the new app effectively. On January 23, 2014, Jelly announced that it had raised Series B funding from

Greylock Partners Greylock Partners is one of the oldest venture capital firms, founded in 1965, with committed capital of over $3.5 billion under management. The firm focuses on early-stage companies in the consumer, enterprise software and infrastructure as wel ...

. On March 31, 2014, Jelly updated its iOS app to the 1.1 version that allows users create questions using a map and a specific location. On March 8, 2017, Pinterest said it had acquired Jelly Industries.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jelly (App) Pinterest acquisitions Human-based computation Defunct social networking services American companies established in 2013 2017 mergers and acquisitions

History

See also

References