Spring.me

For the online form builder formerly known as "Formspring", see Formstack.

Spring.me was a social networking service. Until a rebranding in 2013, it was known as Formspring, a question-and-answer-based social network launched in 2009 by Ade Olonoh, the founder of online form builder Formstack.

Formspring, Inc.

Type of site	Social Q&A website
Available in	English
Headquarters	San Francisco, California , US
Area served	Worldwide
Founder(s)	Ade Olonoh
Key people	Ade Olonoh
Industry	Social networking service
URL	spring.me
Registration	Required to post responses and questions
Launched	November 2009; 14 years ago (2009-11)
Current status	Defunct May 15, 2013 (2013-05-15), URL redirects to Twoo

As of August 1, 2015, the website had become a portal of Twoo; Humor Rainbow Inc. does not disclose whether the original contents still exist.

History

Formspring was launched in Indianapolis in November 2009 by the founder of online form builder Formstack, Ade Olonoh. He noticed that most of their users were using the service to create "ask me anything" forms and decided to launch a separate site to make this easier. At launch, Formspring was referred to by its full URL, formspring.me, to distinguish it from Formstack, which was at that time also called Formspring.com. Formspring.me gained 1 million registered users in its first 45 days, so the original Formspring website was renamed to avoid confusion between the two sites.

Formspring was soon spun off into a separate company and moved to San Francisco, California.^[1][2] Due to its sudden popularity, a number of websites quickly implemented similar features, such as ASKfm, Tumblr, and MyYearbook's "Ask Me" services.^[3] On June 3, 2010, Formspring launched a major redesign, overhauling every aspect of the website.^[4]

Formspring received a $2.5 million series seed round of funding from a large group of angel investors, including SV Angel, Lowercase Capital, Kevin Rose, and Dave Morin.^[5] Formspring named Rogelio (Ro) Choy as COO in April 2011.^[6] On June 28, 2011, Formspring announced that its 25 millionth user had signed up.^[7]

In June 2011, Formspring launched features for celebrities to better communicate with their fans, including verified accounts.^[8] Celebrity Formspring users could be found on the site's "Formspring Favorites" section,^[9] which categorized verified users by music, comedy and various entertainment verticals. In November 2011, Formspring launched a media partnership program,^[10] partnering for the first time with media outlets including MTV, Hearst, Funny or Die and The Huffington Post.

As of early 2012, Formspring had reached over 4 billion responses.^[11] In February 2012, Formspring was named a top ten most innovative social media site by Fast Company.^[12]

Features

Users of the site could follow others privately. While logged in as a registered user, people could also ask questions of their followers from the homepage. Spring.me also asked one question per day named "Formspring Question of the Day" which was flashed in users' inbox. In January 2011, Spring.me added a smile button which acted similar to the Like button on Facebook.

In September 2011, Formspring released an iPhone Application^[13] and several months later, in January 2012, further added to its mobile presence with the launch of its Android Application.^[14]

Also in January 2012, Formspring launched two additional features to the service. One new tool allowed users to sort responses to questions by the number of "Smiles" received to bring the most liked content to the top of response streams. The added functionality aimed to give users the power to curate the best content on the site. In addition to letting users see their top smiled responses, the new feature allowed Formspringers to view top responses from other users and also see the most smiled responses to a question that was asked to multiple people at once. The second new functionality launched gave Formspringers the option to choose whether they wanted to publicly or privately follow the accounts of other users. As part of this feature, Formspring users were then able to see how many others on the site were following their account.^[11]

Controversies

Since its inception, Formspring garnered controversies, especially among teenagers, as it opened doors for harassment and cyberbullying due to the anonymity of the entries.^[15][16] A fight between several students at a high school in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, started after an argument over Formspring and it received some media attention in February 2010.^[17] On 12 March 2010, a news article, which later turned out to be a hoax, reported Formspring creators planning to release personal information about its users via Twitter and other social networking sites.^[18] Formspring has stated on its company blog that it will never publicly reveal anonymous information of its users.^[19] On 22 March 2010, Alexis Pilkington, a 17-year-old New York high school graduate, committed suicide,^[20] reportedly after several insulting comments targeting her had been posted on Formspring in the days leading up to her death. Soon after, a local grassroots boycott of the Formspring site began.^[21]

In February 2011, an incident allegedly prompted by bullying on Formspring led to the death of 15-year-old Natasha MacBryde from Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, United Kingdom. The Coroner's inquiry heard that she received anonymous personal abuse via the website on 13 February; this appears to have compounded bullying and teenage anxiety to a level, where MacBryde took her own life on 14 February after researching suicide methods. According to the Daily Telegraph, Det Sgt Shanie Erwin told the inquest that Natasha was known to have received a short anonymous message containing personal abuse via the Formspring networking site on February 13. The message, which was read to the jury by Det Sgt Erwin, derided MacBryde for "hiding" behind make-up. It ended: “Start acting nicer to people or you will lose everyone. Mark my words.”^[22][23]

In September 2011, another bullying incident, involving anonymous harassment on Formspring, led to the death of a 14-year-old. Jamey Rodemeyer, a student from Williamsville North High School in New York state, United States, committed suicide on 18 September after repeated incidents of bullying in real life and on Formspring. Rodemeyer's video, "It Gets Better", specifically called out Formspring as a factor in contributing to the anti-gay bullying impacting his life.^[24]

In March 2011, Formspring participated in a White House Conference on Bullying Prevention along with MTV, Facebook, Survey Monkey and others. At the conference, Formspring announced that it was working with The MIT Media Lab to develop new approaches in detecting cyberbullying, and to design interfaces that would help prevent or mitigate when it occurs.^[25][26] In January 2012, Formspring also announced that it was a sponsor of the Great American NO BULL Challenge, a nationwide video contest that encourages teenagers to stand up to bullying.^[27]

The concept of Formspring was copied by the creators of Ask.fm, who used the same format of allowing anonymous questioning by people who knew each other offline, which some experts believe is a toxic mix that will inevitably lead to trouble for some users. Both sites have been linked to several teenage suicides.^[28][29]

Closure and rebranding

Formspring announced it would be closing over the months of March and April 2013. The reason for the closure was that it had "been challenging to sustain the resources needed to keep the lights on".

According to the announcement, asking questions on Formspring would be disabled on March 31, 2013, and the entire site would be shut down permanently on April 15, 2013, after which, all content on the site would be deleted.^[30]

On March 31, 2013, a short updated statement was released which stated "Great news! We have a last-minute deal in the works that will help keep Formspring up. More details to follow in the coming week."^[30]

On May 8, 2013, a statement on the main page was issued stating; "5/8/13 – Great news friends, Formspring has been saved and is now under new management. Get ready for some cool and exciting new features. Stay tuned for more updates and happy posting!!". In May 2013, Spring.me acquired the assets of Formspring. Spring.me was officially launched in beta in September 2013 and launched publicly in November 2013.

As of August 1, 2015, the website has become a portal of Twoo, a social discovery and rating platform.

See also

•  San Francisco Bay Area portal
•  Indiana portal
•  Internet portal

• ASKfm

References

1. "FormSpring.com changes name to eliminate confusion with social site | Indianapolis Business Journal". IBJ.com. 2010-03-27. Retrieved 2010-11-06.
2. . about.formspring.me. 2010-10-19. Archived from the original on 2012-06-22. Retrieved 2010-11-07.
3. Jason Kincaid January 6, 2010 (2010-01-06). "Inspired" By Formspring, Tumblr Launches Nearly Identical "Ask Me". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved 2010-11-06.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
4. Watkins, Cap (2010-06-03). . formspring.me blog. Archived from the original on 27 March 2012. Retrieved 3 June 2010.
5. Stone, Brad (18 March 2010). "Spring Brings Funding for Formspring.me". The New York Times. Retrieved 12 January 2014.
6. Lacey, Sarah (21 April 2011). "Formspring Names Ro Choy COO; Has Answered Three Billion Questions To Date". TechCrunch. Retrieved 21 April 2011.
7. O'Dell, Jolie (30 June 2011). "Q&A App Formspring Hits 25 Million Users [INFOGRAPHIC]". Mashable. Retrieved 18 August 2011.
8. O’Dell, Jolie (10 June 2011). "Celeb Q&A: Formspring Adds Special Features for the Famous". Mashable. Retrieved 9 January 2012.
9. "Formspring Favorites". Formspring.me. Retrieved 9 January 2012.
10. Kessler, Sarah. "Formspring Partners With MTV, Hearst And Others For Topical Q&A". Mashable. Retrieved 9 January 2012.
11. Empson, Rip. "Formspring Hits 4 Billion Answers; Transforms Into Content Curator With "Smile Sort"". TechCrunch. Retrieved 9 January 2012.
12. "The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies". Fast Company. Retrieved 13 February 2012.
13. Geron, Tomio (2011-09-13). "Formspring launches iPhone App". Forbes.
14. Kessler, Sarah. "Formspring Launches an Android App". Mashable. Retrieved 24 January 2012.
15. . Media.www.uctangerine.com. 2010-02-26. Archived from the original on 2010-03-01. Retrieved 2010-11-06.
16. Lewin, Tamar (May 5, 2010). "Teenage Insults, Scrawled on Web, Not on Walls". The New York Times.
17. Owens, Dennis (February 19, 2010). . abc27 News. Archived from the original on 2010-06-11.
18. "Formspring prank story plagues Twitter". Inquisitr.com. 2010-03-12. Retrieved 2010-11-06.
19. . Formspring.me. 2010-08-10. Archived from the original on 2012-03-27. Retrieved 2010-12-14.
20. . Newsday. 2010-03-23. Archived from the original on 2012-10-14. Retrieved 2010-11-06.
21. "Alexis Pilkington's friends vow to boycott social networking site". Newsday. 2010-03-24. Retrieved 2010-11-06.
22. "Teenager in rail suicide was sent abusive message on social networking site". The Daily Telegraph. London. 2011-07-22. Retrieved 2011-09-16.
23. . birminghammail.net. 2011-07-22. Archived from the original on 2012-10-19. Retrieved 2011-07-25.
24. "Teenager struggled with bullying before taking his life". Buffalo News. 2011-09-20. Retrieved 2011-09-20.
25. . The White House. 2011-03-10. Archived from the original on 2011-08-20. Retrieved 18 August 2011.
26. O'Dell, Jolie. "Formspring Takes a Stand Against Bullies — With Help From MIT". Mashable. Retrieved 18 August 2011.
27. "Introducing the Great American NO BULL Challenge". Formspring Blog. Retrieved 5 February 2012.
28. Binns, Amy (2014) "Twitter City and Facebook Village: teenage girls' personas and experiences influenced by choice architecture in social networking sites", Journal of Media Practice Vol. 15, Iss. 2, 2014 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14682753.2014.960763 free version available at https://www.academia.edu/9345514/Twitter_City_Facebook_Village_Teenage_girls_personas_and_experiences_influenced_by_choice_architecture_in_social_networking_sites
29. Binns, Amy (2013) Facebook’s Ugly Sisters: Anonymity and Abuse on Formspring and Ask.fm. Media Education Research Journal . Volume 4, Issue 1. ISSN 2040-4530 http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/8378/
30. . Archived from the original on 16 March 2013. Retrieved 16 March 2013.

External links

• Official website