Even after claiming its mark in most domains of the Internet ecosystem, Google Inc. has been struggling to build a strong presence in the social media space. It’s latest effort comprises the release of a group-sharing app called Spaces, that comes integrated with Google Search, YouTube and Chrome.
To expand the use-cases of its group chat application, Google is now undertaking the acquisition of website link sharing platform Kifi. The collaborative platform has created a knowledge graph that seamlessly enables you to organize, share, discuss, and find the relevant links to content that matter to you and your team.
The terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed by either parties, but it seems that it’s actually an acqui-hire. The Kifi team will now be joining Google and help in further development of the Spaces app. In a Medium post released by Kifi, it adds that,
We see a lot of alignment to Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Our team will be joining the Spaces team at Google to build solutions focused on improving group sharing, conversation, and content finding.
After the failed experiment of building a social community with Google+, the company is now focused more on building connections using easy-to-use chat applications. With the announcement of new chat and video apps in the form of Allo and Duo at Google I/O, Spaces has received lukewarm response from users.
But, Google isn’t giving up on its latest social experiment anytime soon. Spaces still has much scope for improvement in group activities and collaboration. The Kifi team is definitely gonna help them refine the same with their link sharing, management and recommendation technology.
As also noted in the Medium post, Kifi’s service and data will soon be phased out and not become one with Google Spaces. The users who’ve trusted their content organization and collaboration to Kifi, will be able to enjoy the service for only a couple more months. The company will then shut down the platform and give users some more time to easily export their data.
Based out of Mountain View, California, Kifi was co-founded by Dan Blumenfeld and Eishay Smith in 2012. It has been focused on delivering a consumer-centric experience that allows you to manage content shared within external sources like Slack & Twitter. The company had managed to raise about $11.2 million in multiple rounds of seed funding till date.
