The problem with social media is that it is powered by thousands of small companies, which may or may not have sound financial backing. Many companies with good finances come up with dud apps or gobble up small companies and then shut them down.
One of the latest to shut down is AOL's Brizzly, a Twitter web client. Brizzly held a lot of promise, but never really took off. Though Brizzly was like a breath of fresh air when it was launched, there wasn't much development to retain customers' interest.
Google's attempt to bridge scholarly articles and social media, Knol, also bit the dust. Knol never really picked up after the initial excitement surrounding its launch. Intellectual products like Knol don't seem to figure in Google's list of priorities, as Google itself said in its email announcing Knol's closure: “As part of Google's prioritisation of product efforts, we will be retiring Knol.”
The Knol ‘closure' announcement page had a note which said: “Knol will be discontinued as a service, but we've worked with Solvitor and Crowd Favorite to create Annotum, an open-source platform based upon WordPress that allows you to continue authoring and publishing scholarly articles.” This could mean that Google has nothing to do with Annotum, other than “working with” others to create it and helping Knol users migrate to Annotum.
This comes after the closure of another Google product - Wave. Again, though Wave had created lot of interest, people really did not understand how to use it.
Both the closures were from big cos. But Brizzly, founded in 2009, was acquired by AOL in 2010. And in 2012, it was curtains for the app. Sometimes, it makes you wonder whether the biggies have any plans at all when they acquire small cos. Brizzly is just one sad example.