Stickis

Technology

Stickis was noted, at inception, as a significant evolution from more rudimentary social bookmarking and search services, and an early enabler in the ambient social networking space, where interactions with one's community happen not only at a centralized location, but possibly anywhere online. The service allows members to annotate web pages as they browse, and share conversation and commentary about their discoveries, both in the form of sticky notes left on top of the very pages being annotated, and in the form of blog-like entries at a centralized, access-controlled repository.

The service is using a contextual and social web overlay technology developed by Activeweave, Inc., taking advantage of the add-on it built for the Firefox, Flock and Internet Explorer browsers to provide users with always-on, in-place access to the relevant annotations left for them by their collaborators.

History

An initial prototype was made available to alpha testers and the press in late 2005 by software entrepreneurs Jean Sini and Marc A. Meyer. In early 2006, the company raised a round of seed investment funding from business angels including Esther Dyson and Eric Di Benedetto.

Stickis then launched its public beta in November 2006. The service, currently active, primarily focuses on tight-knit communities building a repository of shared accumulated knowledge, via the annotation paradigm, making commentary available to participants both as annotations and as a multi-author blog.

The annotations made by users are called "stickis" by the service, derived from Stickies, and may include any HTML markup, images, video, and widgets.