Startup Failures in 2011

Pioneered social Q&A with AI routing — Google bought it for $50M and killed it in 14 months.

A music streaming service that would be bundled into hardware devices, offering unlimited streaming and downloading for the lifetime of the device.

The studio that made Project Gotham Racing and Geometry Wars was closed by Activision after Blur failed to outsell a direct competitor released the same week.

Share everything you buy. Except your credit card number. Oops.

Amazon-backed online pharmacy that got beaten by CVS and acquired by Walgreens for $429M.

Jonathan Abrams built the first major social network, declined a $30M Google offer in 2003. Servers crashed under growth. MySpace overtook them in 2004. Sold to MOL Global for $100M in 2009. Shut entirely 2015.

The original social network that invented the template — and gave it to MySpace and Facebook to execute.

Google launched a social network inside Gmail. It automatically told everyone who your closest contacts were.

The social network that owned Latin America — until Facebook arrived

49 days on sale, sold more units at $99 than at $499 — HP's fastest-ever fire sale.

THQ's New York studio made Homefront — and was shut three months after launch when the game sold 2.6M copies but fell short of THQ's 3M target.

Microsoft's iPod killer — killed by iPod

The first social network. Facebook arrived. MySpace watched.

Rupert Murdoch paid $580 million for the internet and sold it for $35 million six years later

HP paid $1.2B for Palm's webOS — and discontinued it 49 days after launching the TouchPad

Built the most beautiful digital book ever made — Facebook bought it and cancelled publishing.

Netflix announced Qwikster on September 18, 2011. Cancelled it on October 10, 2011. 22 days. One of the fastest corporate reversals ever.

Khosla Ventures' cellulosic ethanol company that received a $162M DOE loan — built a Georgia plant, never reached commercial scale, and was sold for parts when the loan defaulted

A suite of applications allowing users to manage multiple social media accounts simultaneously across platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

$970M solar startup killed by cheap Chinese panels and a government loan scandal

StackMob was a platform-as-a-service company for mobile developers to build payment-friendly applications.

The social network for meeting strangers that Facebook made redundant

Thoora was a news aggregation platform.

Microsoft's 30 million-user blogging network that couldn't out-compete WordPress