threadsy will be shutting down on November 2, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO, October 2011

Dear threadsy Community,

With sadness, we announce today that we will be shutting down threadsy on November 2, 2011.

threadsy is the world’s first truly integrated communication client. We gained traction swiftly among an enthusiastic community of users who enjoyed using threadsy to pull together their busy online social lives into a simple, enjoyable experience. More than just collecting email and the broader social web in one place, we helped our users organize multiple communication streams and quickly get deep context on the people with whom they communicate at just the right moment.

Our entire team has been extremely excited about and proud of threadsy since it started as just the seed of an idea back in 2008. From the start, we have been equally honored to serve a community of threadsy users who were not only loyal and passionate, but also creative and thoughtful, constantly bringing us fresh ideas about how to continually improve the user experience for everyone.

As enthusiastic as our team is about threadsy, the economics behind the application are challenging, and ultimately, we did not gain users quickly enough to justify continued investment. We hope to have the chance to work on threasdsy again someday.

In the meantime, we’ve shifted gears to work on a big, new opportunity that we are extremely excited about. We’re looking forward to telling you more about that soon.

We hope you have enjoyed using threadsy as much as we’ve loved bringing it to you!

Still interested in leveraging the threadsy technology and assets? Please do not hesitate to get in touch with us at info@threadsy.com.

October 19, 2011 at 1:24 pm 48 comments

Fresh batch of over 40 changes


A batch of over 40 changes just went live that make threadsy easier to use, faster, and more stable. Here are the highlights:

1. No more annoying auto-scroll of Streams

Previously, when new tweets and Facebook posts came in, the Streams column would move down automatically. This movement was annoying when trying to read or interact with updates in your stream. Now when new items come in, it won’t auto-scroll and you’ll see a bar at the top showing how many new updates are available:

Click anywhere on the bar to see the latest updates. Note that if you keep your Streams column scrolled to the top, the new updates will automatically load in the same way as before.

2. Float down your Stream all the way

Now you can go back in your Streams as far as you want. It works the same as Inbound: scroll to the bottom of Streams to automatically load in older updates.

3. Constant fetching of new messages

Previously, threadsy would frequently check for new messages only when you were actively using it. Now it checks frequently whenever you have it open in your browser. Keep threadsy open in a browser tab or window while you do other things and the threadsy ding sound will alert you of new messages in your Inbound.

4. Stats on links in Stream updates

At the end of every bit.ly link in tweets in your Stream, we’ve added a quick way to jump to bit.ly’s stats page for that link. Just click on the stats icon and that link’s stats will open in a new browser tab.

5. Faster-loading chat

The Meebo chat bar at the bottom of threadsy lets you use GTalk, Facebook Chat, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, and more all in one place. Meebo recently released a major update of the bar that improves performance and bolsters security (here’s a PDF with the details). With the updated chat bar, threadsy will start up and run faster and more reliably.

Plus over 30 minor enhancements & bug fixes (partial list)

    Enhancements:

  • Support for SBC email addresses
  • Performance improvement by batching up bitly calls
  • New Hotmail contacts importer
  • Show default profile pic in person profile when person has none
  • Added prompt for user to re-auth Facebook on error
  • Moved Facebook email notifications ‘[name] posted something on your Wall’ to Archived folder
  • Added timeout to IMAP authentication
  • Changed Yahoo Mail icon in message list to purple one
  • Removed scrollbar inside compose/reply
    Bugs:

  • Fixed broken Like action on Inbound Facebook wallpost
  • Fixed Facebook comments sometimes not visible for Inbound Facebook wallpost
  • Fixed after a post, the ‘post’ button state didn’t update the next time try to post
  • Fixed IE reply sometimes broke Inbound
  • Facebook Like button now goes to proper fan page http://www.facebook.com/threadsy
  • Fixed errors when Facebook is blocked
  • Fixed new messages in folders/labels with existing messages not appearing
  • Fixed restoring threadsy tab makes all messages stick in ‘loading’ in Chrome
  • Fixed can’t edit/delete signature from a new email in IE
  • Fixed Quick DM failure on UTF characters
  • Fixed Twitter search with non-English characters
  • Fixed cursor focus issues in social media box when RTing/pasting

September 16, 2010 at 12:46 pm 14 comments

Monday morning modifications to Streams


We released a batch of tweaks this morning that mostly relate to the Streams column. None of them are major, but taken together, they will change the world. Well not really, but here’s a short list of the highlights:

  • Faster display of Streams and faster switching between Streams account filters.
  • Up to 5 times more Stream items if you leave threadsy open for a while.
  • Using Facebook’s Graph API in Streams. The Graph API is their preferred, latest, and most supported API. This insures that threadsy will be able to take advantage of the most up-to-date Facebook changes going forward.
  • Twitter search when click a hashtag in tweets (e.g., #worldcup).
  • Play Facebook videos and Youtube videos directly in Facebook posts.
  • Photos and videos posted as short URLs now appear in Streams. For example, a bit.ly link to a twitpic now shows the twitpic photo in threadsy.
  • See the number of Likes next to the thumbs up icon for every Facebook post.

We also pushed a bunch of bug fixes which we’ll update in our feedback forum.

July 12, 2010 at 3:18 pm 17 comments

Like OMG, see Facebook likes & interests in threadsy

When you open a message in threadsy, you can see a lot of interesting stuff about the sender in the profile that opens on the side, including recent Facebook & Twitter updates, photos, bio info, and their website memberships.

Now you can see even more. Introducing a first-of-its-kind feature: see Facebook likes & interests in threadsy.

  • Highlight shared passions: See all the Likes & Interests you have in common with someone.
    She kickboxes? No way. So do I!

  • Do your homework: Unearth interests to get a better sense of what a person cares about.
    Just got an email from someone you met over the weekend? Check them out!

  • Learn about new stuff: Browse a person’s entire batch of Likes and find interesting new ones.
    Share some movie Likes with someone? See other movies they like to discover good new ones.

  • Works for anyone: Doesn’t matter if they’re a Facebook friend or not. If they have public Likes you’ll see them here.

It all shows up in a new likes & interests section in the person profile. Any mutual Likes appear first and then the others. Hover over any of them to see additional info and click the ‘Like’ button to like them. If you want even more info, you can click any image to go to the Facebook page.

To see all of a person’s likes & interests, click the ‘more’ arrow. Hover over any item to see more info. As you can see below, there’s a ton of exploration to be had in here (like, what exactly is Marmite anyway?):

This is the latest feature we’ve added that focuses on creating value by integrating your social graphs across multiple online communication services. It not only brings data to the right moment but goes a step further and highlights what matters most. We believe there’s a lot of potential in this area and more ideas are in the works in our just formed threadsy labs (leave your threadsy username here to join).

We’re excited for you to check this out and are curious to hear about your experiences using it.

June 23, 2010 at 10:20 am 4 comments

some Tuesday Tweaks


We pushed a minor release today with some small feature tweaks. Highlights:

Smaller threadsy logo in social signature
We heard your feedback and reduced the size of the threadsy logo by 70%. We also shortened the threadsy link language. Here’s an evolution of the social signature design so far:

Some people requested that we remove the threadsy logo from the social signature altogether. We haven’t done that yet because we think this is valuable way to get the word out about us and gives people who like your signature a simple way to get their own. If the signature is still a no-go for you, please let us know why below and we’ll factor that in to our next revision.

“In reply to…” links for Inbound Twitter @replies
In response to your feedback in our forum, we added a link to the original tweet that was replied to for all Twitter @replies in your Inbound so you can better follow the conversation. Clicking the link takes you to the tweet on twitter.com (for now). We plan on improving this in the future so that you can view the entire Twitter conversation directly in threadsy.

The Ding is Dead in Streams
We’ve changed the notification sound to only ding when you have new stuff in Inbound, not in Streams. Note that you can always turn all sounds on/off in your threadsy settings.

See person profiles while composing a new message
Now when you compose a new Inbound message, threadsy will auto-open the person profile tied to each address you add. It makes it easier to check out the latest info about people before you send your message. If you have multiple recipients on a message, just click the address that you want to check out to see their person profile.

And of course a bunch of bug fixes
We’ll update all of the fixed bugs in our feedback forum shortly. Thanks for reporting and helping improve our Beta!

June 8, 2010 at 3:35 pm 8 comments

Now see Twitter stats in threadsy


We’ve improved the person profile in threadsy to show Twitter stats in the Bio section of the profile. For each of the person’s Twitter accounts, you can see the followers, following, and tweets stats. A follow button on the right side of each Twitter account shown lets you manage your follow/unfollow status for that account.

If a person has multiple Twitter accounts, you can see them all listed in their profile. Also, if you have multiple Twitter accounts added to threadsy, you can follow/unfollow each of the person’s Twitter accounts from any of your accounts. Here’s an example of what that looks like:

May 28, 2010 at 9:57 am 3 comments

See more photos in your threadsy stream


We’ve enhanced your Twitter stream reading experience by letting you see more of the photos hidden in your stream directly in threadsy.

For example, instead of this:

You’ll now see this:

We previously released the ability to see twitpic and yfrog photos and watch youtube and vimeo videos directly in your threadsy Twitter stream. Today we’ve added a bunch of other services to the list. Now also see photos from flickr, tweetphoto, twitgoo, img.ly, mobypicture, and brizzly. Also, links to photos (jpg, png, or gif) show up directly in threadsy. In the spirit of being visual, here’s all of that in picture form:

Any other important photo or video sites you’d like to see directly in your threadsy stream? Please let us know in the comments below.

May 20, 2010 at 2:57 pm 3 comments

threadsy opens to the public!


We’ve got some big news so we’re talking strictly in Press Release language today.

SAN FRANCISCO, May 4, 2010 — threadsy (http://www.threadsy.com), the world’s first truly integrated communication experience, launched a public beta version of its service today. It’s free for anyone to use and works without any downloads right in a web browser.

threadsy pulls together your email, Facebook, Twitter, chat, and the broader social web into a simple, enjoyable experience. More than simply aggregating information, threadsy integrates the services to provide better organization of messages and deep context on the people you communicate with.

Built from the ground up for today’s evolved communication mix

“Online communication is changing quickly. It’s becoming more public, social, and powerful, but it’s also becoming a fragmented mess,” said Rob Goldman, CEO of threadsy. “The average 23-year-old now has 6 different accounts to check every day.” Email used to dominate online communication; now it’s just a piece of a much larger tapestry including social networks, instant messaging, mobile devices, and rich content sharing. Just in the past year, online communication has seen profound changes.

“Facebook usage increased by 5 times, US smartphone penetration grew 50%, Google released its own Buzz social info sharing product, and now Twitter’s gaining 300,000 users a day,” said Goldman. “threadsy anticipated this explosion of communication channels and was designed to make managing them simpler and more enjoyable.”

See all your messages in one place

threadsy lets anyone combine all of their existing email, Facebook, Twitter, and chat accounts in one place. For email, threadsy supports Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, MobileMe, AOL Mail, and IMAP accounts. threadsy is a full-featured email client with support for folders, archiving, drafts, and custom email signatures.

For chat, threadsy supports Google Talk, Facebook Chat, AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Myspace, and others through integration with Meebo. threadsy uses the recommended secure access methods from Google, Facebook, and Twitter and industry-standard encryption for other services.

Never miss must-read stuff again

threadsy groups all of your messages into 2 buckets: everything directly to you from email, Facebook, and Twitter in one column and your Facebook News Feed and Twitter stream in another. This organization insures important messages directed to you don’t slip through the cracks.

Focus on the people

threadsy creates detailed profiles of the people you message with. When someone sends you a message, browse their latest photos, website profiles, and Facebook and Twitter updates.

Deep integration with Facebook and Twitter

threadsy lets you fully interact with Facebook and Twitter. Post updates to either service or both at the same time. Comment on, like, love, and dislike Facebook updates. Follow/unfollow people in Twitter. Search Twitter for interesting tweets. See photos and watch videos. All directly in threadsy.

What’s new since our private beta launch

Since a successful private beta launch at the Techcrunch 50 startup competition 7 months ago, threadsy has rolled out a steady stream of major enhancements based on feedback from thousands of private beta users. Here are the highlights; you can read more about them on the threadsy blog:

“Unbound” becomes “Streams”


We’ve decided to give the threadsy Unbound column a new name: Streams. The Streams column contains exactly the same stuff as Unbound did, specifically your Facebook news feed and your Twitter streams. So this is really just a name change; the word “Unbound” was confusing a lot of people.

We’re keeping the name Inbound for the other column. Inbound is everything directed to you from email, Facebook, and Twitter. This includes email messages, Facebook messages, Facebook wallposts on your wall, Twitter @mentions, and Twitter Direct Messages. We’ve grouped all of these items into Inbound because we think they’re things you definitely want to know about.

How do you feel about the grouping of Inbound vs. Streams? Does it make your online communications simpler and more enjoyable? We’d love to hear your thoughts below.

April 21, 2010 at 2:49 pm 16 comments

Look ma, no password! threadsy adds Gmail OAuth support


Two weeks ago, Gmail announced support for a secure authentication method called OAuth (see the announcement here). The key benefit of OAuth is that it lets you access your Gmail on sites like threadsy without ever sharing your password. Today we’ve added full support for this new protocol; we’re one of the first to do so!

Now with threadsy you can add your existing Gmail or Google Apps email accounts without ever providing your passwords to threadsy. Existing threadsy users can upgrade to the new standard, and once you do we’ll no longer store your email password. Please see below for a guide to upgrading any Gmail or Google Apps accounts you’ve previously added to threadsy.

Keeping your information private & secure is something threadsy takes very seriously, and supporting Gmail OAuth is just the latest of many steps we’ve taken. We also use Facebook Connect (Facebook’s recommended authentication method) and Twitter OAuth (Twitter’s secure authentication method).

For other non-Google email accounts that you use with threadsy (Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, and IMAP), we use industry-standard encryption to secure your passwords. We’re closely watching the latest developments such as Yahoo Mail’s recent announcement of OAuth support and welcome the trend of more secure access. It’s also worth reiterating that threadsy will never share your email address, contacts, or personal information with third parties. See our privacy policy for more details on how threadsy protects your privacy.

Walkthrough: upgrading Gmail & Google Apps accounts in threadsy
If you’ve already added any Gmail & Google Apps accounts to threadsy, when you login you’ll see this popup:

Click the green upgrade button and you’ll see one of 2 screens:

Screen 1: If you see this screen, select an account from the list or select ‘Choose another account’:

Screen 2: Gmail login screen on google.com, enter your email address and password. Your password is not shared outside of Google.

Then on the next screen, click ‘Grant access’ to upgrade:

If you have any difficulties in the upgrade process, please let us know at support@threadsy.com and we’ll work through it with you.

April 14, 2010 at 5:56 pm 3 comments

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threadsy is the world’s first integrated communication client. It combines email, Facebook, Twitter, and the broader social web into a unique, enjoyable experience that provides deep context on the people you message with.

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