Story


In 2005, Morten Lund and Nicolaj Reffstrup created a gossiping IM bot in the form of a teenage girl and named her “Spleak.” The founders quickly saw a lot of user interest develop around the bot, but also recognized that “Spleak” needed to grow and change significantly if it was to ever reach its full potential. The group asked Morrie Eisenberg, an established figure in the IM world, to consider taking over management of the company.

Morrie had long believed that IM was an underutilized medium for distributing content and this opportunity fit in well with his focus and interests. He accepted the CEO position at Spleak Media Network and immediately began building his management team. Josh Scott understood the IM value proposition from his work with Skype and jumped onboard. Soon after, well-known venture capital firms Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Sunstone Capital demonstrated interest and support by funding the company.

Over the past 18 months, Spleak has grown into the business thesis we see today: a novel platform for delivering content almost everywhere through bots, web widgets, and applications.

This platform enables users to rate & share content created by professional content publishers as well as to create content of their own. Celebrity gossip has been an enormously successful initial focus area; several other content genres are just around the corner.



Vision


Cross Platform Content Distribution

 Users who engage with a Spleak application on a social network or a widget on a destination site are able to create, rate and share content simultaneously with other users who interact with the product via their favorite instant messaging applications like AIM, MSN, and GTalk.

Spleak is highly versatile and consistent across platforms. Though the user experience differs between Facebook and MSN Live Messenger, for example, the same content and functionality exists on both platforms.

As consumer interactions are changing to incorporate more and more services and websites, Spleak operates autonomously, not relying on one specific communication method.

 

IM as Content and Application Platform

 Users chatting on IM typically trade “throwaway” messages that are lost once the session ends. With Spleak, content lives on indefinitely, beyond just one session. Because of this, Spleak has proven that IM is an effective tool for publishing and distributing both user-generated and professionally created content.

Content publishers are always seeking new tools, platforms and methods for delivering content to wide and increasingly disparate audiences. Spleak offers a highly engaging and interactive content delivery experience to users who are typically unreachable for mainstream media publishers.

 

Hybrid publishing

 Spleak distributes user generated content (UGC) side-by-side with mainstream media content across a variety of communication networks, including instant messaging, social networking, and SMS.

Spleak is working with several industry leading publications to seemlessly deliver high quality content. Consumers are able to pick the content they like and read it via interactive IM conversations, through web-widgets, within their favorite social networks, and even via SMS. Further Spleak makes it easy and fun for consumers to publish their own content into the network alongside editorial content, and provides enough structure around the UGC to make the network attractive for large mainstream publishers.

 

The Future of Mainstream Media

 Traditional publishers are facing challenges at every turn as their industry evolves more rapidly than it ever has before. The Spleak Media Network provides a unique opportunity to leverage the publishers' best assets in a fashion that is quick and easy to implement.

Publishers are able to syndicate content across the Spleak network, enabling access to a new, difficult to reach segment of users.

Editorially produced content is combined with UGC across all the places Spleak has a presence (AIM, MSN, Facebook, MySpace, blogs, SMS, feed readers, Spleak sites, etc.) By offering publishers access to the entire Spleak network of users, they are given the opportunity to expose their content to millions of new readers. Content distribution requires no new technology adoption or process creation on the part of the publisher. Several entirely new channels are opened with no incremental cost or development resources required.



Team


Morrie Eisenberg, CEO

 Morrie is the CEO of Spleak Media Network. Morrie first became interested in instant messaging while in graduate school at MIT, due in large part to a paper he wrote analyzing the rapid development and personalization of IM-based avatars. That interest brought Morrie to Microsoft, where he led MSN / Windows Live internet services distribution deals with operators across Europe and Asia. Previously, Morrie led business development at Digital Motorworks through the company’s growth and acquisition by Automatic Data Processing. Prior to Digital Motorworks, Morrie worked as a consultant at Bain & Company. Morrie has an MBA from MIT Sloan and a finance degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Josh Scott, VP Product

 Josh Scott joined Spleak Media Network in September 2006 as the Vice President of Product and User Community. Josh joined Spleak Media Network from eBay, Inc. where he defined eBay's local and B2B strategies. Prior to eBay, Josh was a consultant at Bain & Company. Josh received an MBA from University of California, Berkeley and a BBA from University of Michigan.

Tyler Wells, VP Engineering

 Tyler Wells is the Vice President of Engineering at Spleak Media Network. Tyler brings more than 10 years of global software engineering and technology management experience in the enterprise software and consumer software industries. Prior to Spleak, Tyler was a Senior Engineering Manager with Skype working in the Innovations Group. Before Skype, Tyler served in several roles at FaceTime Communications. Prior to FaceTime, Tyler was a Member of Technical Staff with Hughes Space and Communications where he worked on the Milstar Satellite Communications System. He attended both Cal State Long Beach and Cal State Northridge.



Work with Us


Interested in working with Spleak Media Network?

 We have cooperative agreements with many content publishers as we aim to drive traffic to partner websites by leveraging the entire Spleak network. In addition to CelebSpleak and SportSpleak (launching soon), we'll be adding Spleak's focused on several new topics in 2008 and many more in 2009. Contact us to learn more about getting involved with future Spleaks!

If you are interested in working with Spleak, please contact us at bizdev@spleak.com.