Slide
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Slide (Slide.com) was a personal media-sharing service founded in 2004 by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin. Its widgets and apps—FunWall, SuperPoke (which let users virtually 'hug', 'punch' or throw sheep at friends), Slideshow and FunPix—rode the rise of MySpace and Facebook, becoming hugely popular in the mid-2000s. It raised about $12.3 million during rounds that at times valued it up to $500 million.
02 / Slide FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Google acquired Slide in August 2010 for $182 million (plus $46 million in staff retention bonuses) as part of its social push, but neither its products nor its people integrated successfully: usage of its apps kept declining. A year later, as Google shifted focus to Google+, it shuttered Slide.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Founded
Max Levchin founds Slide; its social widgets become hits on MySpace and later Facebook.
- Google acquisition
Google acquires Slide for $182 million in August 2010 (plus $46M in retention bonuses); Levchin becomes VP of Engineering.
- Shutdown
On August 26, 2011 Google announces it is shutting down Slide; its apps (Photovine, Video Inbox, Pool Party) are retired, staff reassigned, and Levchin leaves Google.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Google paid $182 million for Slide in August 2010, plus $46 million in staff retention bonuses ($228 million total).
- 02
Google announced the shutdown on August 26, 2011; apps retired over the following months.
- 03
No reliable company-level loss figure with subject/period/basis was disclosed (the $228M was Google's spend, not a disclosed company loss).