The Daily Trap, An Important Announcement on the Evolution of Trapit
When we launched the beta version of Trapit back in 2011, it was with the lofty ambition to create a uniquely personalized web for each and every person. We knew that lurking beyond the shallow social echo chamber, crappy search results, memes, and trends is a vast undiscovered web of high-quality, original content with no way of reaching its intended audience, an audience of people frustrated with the growing lack of personal relevance in the web experience and their inability to connect with good content on the subjects most important or interesting to them.
It wasn’t until we built and started using an early version of Trapit that we realized just how big this undiscovered web really is, and how much of that good stuff we’d been missing. Great content that we didn’t know existed simply because it wasn’t deemed important enough by our social networks – or didn’t show up on the first (or second, fifth, tenth…) page of search results. Since our launch we’ve helped tens of million of people connect with hundreds of millions of pieces of content through our award-winning user experiences on web and mobile. What’s better is that we’ve made a difference in people’s lives, from the troubled patient who discovered an experimental cancer drug trial, to the celebrity chef who is using Trapit discoveries to fight childhood obesity and diabetes, to the teacher whose curriculum leverages Trapit to teach digital literacy and expose students to topical content in support of lesson plans.
Perhaps the most fortuitous trend to emerge from our “free app” experiment is the outpouring of interest we receive from businesses ranging from the titans of media, manufacturing, professional services, retail and technology to visionary start-up companies, all looking to tell their own stories and enhance their own customer experiences through the use of Trapit. Clearly our unique approach to content discovery and distribution struck a nerve with the so-called enterprise, presenting us with a path to create a sustainable and profitable business model. Sometimes it’s easy to forget here in the Silicon Valley, but making money is one of the reasons you start a business after all.
What became abundantly clear from the initial engagements with our new business friends is that enterprise customers demand enterprise-grade solutions, far more capable than our free “consumer” offering. So we rolled up our sleeves and got to work building a new, super version of Trapit we now call the Content Curation Center – chock full of advanced capabilities, customization options and analytics. Our customers love it and Trapit content discoveries now reach an audience of over 100 million people a month through their implementations.
This is all very exciting, and while we are as ambitious as a team can be, we must face the realities of our small size. It is imperative to our success and our ability to provide the ongoing innovation and quality of service our business customers demand that we maintain a rigorous focus. It’s true that in the time we’ve been working on the Content Curation Center, we’ve left the free service untouched, no longer reflective of our latest technology advancements nor our standard of quality. After an extended deliberation and with heavy hearts, we’ve decided to end the availability of our free “consumer” apps for web and iPad effective Wednesday, January 15, 2014.
We sincerely appreciate your patronage and support over the past few years and wish you well in your pursuit of great content.
– Hank, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer