Another day, another acqui-hired shutdown, albeit a pretty long, drawn-out one. Branch Media, acquired by Facebook in January 2014, has shut down the two sites that it created, online “conversations” site Branch.com and its conceptual opposite, bite-sized news for “lurkers” in the form of Potluck.it.
Former co-founder and CEO, Josh Miller, made the announcement specifically about Branch.com’s closure on Twitter earlier, noting that Branch had been relegated to weekend project status for the last year and a half.
https://twitter.com/joshm/status/606122078517882880
A visit to the site brings another short note:
“After more than three years of great conversations, our team has decided to shut down Branch.com. Before we go, we want to let you download the full text of all your posts and branches you joined.”
Users can log in, using Twitter, to download their posts.
While Miller didn’t make a mention of Potluck.it, for the record, that site has also ceased to exist.
After Facebook acquired Branch Media, reportedly for $15 million, there were question marks about what would happen to the two sites.
In the event, Branch kept itself going for a good while, although I’m not sure how many people were actually actively posting there anymore. Now, all those links you might come across through a Google or Twitter search will lead you back to that closure homepage.
All three co-founders — in addition to Miller they include Hursh Agarwal and Cemre Güngör — have made the move to Facebook. There, Miller has worked on two different projects that (quite literally) riff on what they built at Branch. Rooms is that app that lets people create their own forums for conversations. Riff, meanwhile, is an app that lets you create and share video clips. Neither have made many waves so far.
Branch, founded in 2013, was originally incubated and backed by the Obvious Corporation, which was founded by Twitter co-founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone. Another online content project out of Obvious, Medium, is reportedly also going through some hard times.