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AOL says bye-bye to Brizzly

More than a year after being acquired by AOL, Thing Labs is ending its social media client Brizzly to focus full time on AIM.

Blake Robinson
Blake Robinson got his start in tech as a semi-professional gamer. He was the first Managing Editor of CrunchGear, the former gadgets and electronics arm of TechCrunch. His writings on new and emerging technologies have been featured in ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, TechCrunch, Silicon Alley Insider, paidContent, Uncrate, Conde Nast and Ziff Davis. Blake splits his time between San Francisco and New York.
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Blake Robinson

Thing Labs is killing its social media client Brizzly.

When Brizzly launched in 2009, the Web-based client used Google Translate to offer inline translations of tweets. It also distinguished itself by providing definitions for topics trending on Twitter.

Trends would be its defining feature. Brizzly went so far as to launch the "Let's Be Trends" API, giving applications access to its trend information.

In 2010 AOL, acquired Thing Labs. Co-founder Grant Shellen said then on the startup's blog:

First things first: Brizzly is sticking around. Of course anything can happen in the future, but nowhere on our list of things to do is there a "KILL BRIZZLY" item.

It took about 18 months, but that's just what happened — when startups are acquired by larger companies, their core products seldom survive. The Brizzly team now works on AIM at AOL.