tellthem
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
TellThem.mobi was a mobile service launched in 2007 by Jason Cox (previously of the MySpace-related BuddyWave). It let users message all their MySpace friends from a mobile phone: log into tellthem.mobi, pick friends, type a message, attach pictures, and blast it out.
02 / tellthem FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
TellThem was killed days after launch by the platform it depended on. MySpace called on August 29, 2007, threatening legal action over terms-of-service violations: TellThem acted as a proxy for logging into people's MySpace accounts, which MySpace said looked like credential harvesting. The company took its site down immediately and told users to switch to Facebook.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Launched
TellThem.mobi launches, letting users message all their MySpace friends from a mobile phone.
- Killed by MySpace
On August 29, 2007, MySpace threatens legal action; TellThem takes its website down immediately.
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
TellThem took its website down immediately after MySpace's legal threat.
- 02
The team planned to rebuild on Bebo and Facebook, but no relaunch materialized.