Bolt (website)

Bolt was a social networking and video site active from 1996 to 2007. It was shut down for copyright violations.

bolt.com logo from 2006 to 2007

bolt2.com logo

bolt.com logo from 1998 to 2006

In 1996 bolt.com was started as a teen community, by Dan Pelson and Jane Mount as part of Concrete Media.

In 2002 the badges

that were created slowly started leaning towards company sponsored badges, which lead to Bolt becoming more commercial and secretly sneaking ads into the users activities. Some notable ones included the Verizon Wireless, Gillette, and Sony badges

In 2004, bolt.com revamped its site during the summer and officially unveiled itself July 15, 2004. Some notable changes include:

Bolt Plus feature was retired along with the badge, (at the time it cost $24.95 a year and you got a bolt.com T-shirt) Some features that were only accessible to Bolt Plus users that were now opened to all users include:

• Creating personal avatars
• Use of signatures
• Use of emoticons in posts
• Saving Bolt notes.
• Use of the Whiteboard
• Photo limits varied before then from 10, 20, 32, 64 to virtually unlimited. At one time Kodak was a sponsor, but when they left in late 2003, the photo upload limit dropped down to 10 for regular users.

Badge icons nearly doubled in size when they appeared in user profiles and were no longer chronologically ordered, but instead alphabetized.

In 2004, bolt.com finally re-opened the clubs after they were suspended in July and officially unveiled itself September 14, 2004. Some of the notable changes include:

• The removal of HTML customization on the main club page.
• The removal of HTML in the club news, a popular feature that may have contributed to the fall in popularity of Bolt.

The teen community was Bolt Media's main property until 2006, when a new media-sharing site took the name bolt.com.

On February 12, 2007 the New York Times reported that Bolt Media had agreed to a sale to GoFish, an online video competitor. This sale was to finance settlement of a lawsuit with Universal.

On Friday, March 30, 2007 it was announced that Bolt2.com would shutdown on April 6, 2007, ending more than 10 years of operations. Here is the goodbye letter posted on the site to members of the community. [1]

"Well, the time had come. We have decided that it is time to officially say good-bye to Bolt2. In the past few years Bolt Media has explored new ideas, and grown in a different direction. As we continue to move in this direction it has become necessary that we need to make some difficult choices.

One of which is the closure of Bolt2. Although we value our loyal members, we are clearly moving in a new direction and need to focus our energies there. We recognize that many of you have been on the site for up to 10 years, and would like to thank you for your support and for allowing us to be a part of your lives. We hope you are able to take the time to reflect on the people who you may have met through Bolt2 and maintain these friendships after the site is down.

Much like pulling off a band-aid, the closure will be short and hopefully not too painful. The site will officially close on Friday, April 6th at noon (eastern standard time)."

Again, we would like to express our gratitude for your continued support of Bolt2. You have been a valuable part of our lives, and we hope to see you on Bolt in the future.

On July 30, 2007, Digital Music News reported that the GoFish buyout of Bolt had been abandoned. This was later confirmed by GoFish in a press release.

Unable to withstand a 10 million dollar lawsuit from copyright holders, Bolt.com filed for bankruptcy, and the site was shut down August 14, 2007. The following message was posted on the homepage:

"Please be advised that the operations of Bolt, Inc. and Bolt.com have ceased. Net Revolution, Inc. and Bolt, Inc. have executed an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors effective as of August 14, 2007. Please direct any creditor related questions or comments to the Assignee's office to the attention of:

Development Specialists, Inc.
345 California Street
Suite 1150
San Francisco, California 94104-2664

Att: George E. Shoup, III

Email: gshoup@dsi.biz

The Notice of Assignment will be mailed to all known creditors in the near future. If you are interested in acquiring this site or other assets of Bolt or Net Revolution please contact, gshoup@dsi.biz."

bolt.com

Upgrades and Promotions

• Bolt2.com was to be called classicbolt.com
• Bolt member LoLiEpOpPe for 7 years was the highest ranking badge collector until she was dethroned in April 2006 by o0oBaByDoLLo0o.
• The Badge Race Club featured Bolt members in reality series based eliminations for collecting badges.
• Bolt.com had an email service that launched twice and was removed twice.
• For a short time, Bolt.com had video capabilities. The video feature was a prominent element of the now obsolete Bolt.com and was not available on the Bolt2.com site.
• Bolt created a website for 7-up called Gulpit.com in November 25, 2002 that featured bottle caps instead of badges. It was poorly maintained and only visited when a bottle cap was offered that also featured a badge. After 3 bottle caps the site was never updated again. It has since been taken down as of March 4, 2005.
• Bolt user ComputerTech created a site called BoltSucks.com in response to various changes implemented by Bolt in 2004. During this time, they created their own badges, including a very vulgar badge for telling off a bolt staff member. BoltSucks.com was eventually abandoned by it's founder and closed down.
• A club was created to promote a FOX show Wonderfalls in February 2004. A badge was given to members who joined to help spread the word of the show to increase viewership and the show's ratings. The show was cancelled in early April and the club was quickly deleted.
• Bolt2 used to have "radio stations" and members who submitted songs that they wanted to hear on Bolt Radio received the bolt DJ badge.
• Aanderud, also known as Deanna, died on December 30, 2006. Her death was publicized on Bolt.com, and a MySpace page (now defunct) was set up in dedication to Deanna.

Version 1.0

File:Boltmenu.JPG

Old Bolt menu

The original bolt was renamed bolt2 on March 6, 2006. It was marketed towards kids, preteens, and younger teens to create content, meet people, and play games in a safe, no pressure, and age-appropriate environment. Bolt2.com was originally organized around games, pop culture and self-discovery.

However, as members aged and stayed with the site, more and more members were college students and/or between 18-24. These members tended to be more interested in current events, hot news issues, religion and politics, and kept the message boards active with lively heated debate. Many members had known each other for several years and have formed close bonds with their fellow "regs." When Boltfolio, soon to become the new Bolt.com was introduced, members were at first very willing to aid Bolt Media in improving the site. Tensions soon flared between Bolt Media and the supporters of the classic Bolt system as Bolt Media slowly started to turn their full attention to the new Bolt.com. Very few members were willing to make the switch, and after the demise of Bolt2, few stayed on to post on the new Bolt website.

The site features included a daily horoscope, chat rooms, message boards, tagbooks, faceoffs, photo albums, user-submitted content such as concert reviews and a sex & dating blog and a Bolt store that sells merchandise. The site previously hosted a free e-mail service, but it was discontinued due to email companies such as Yahoo and Google providing between 1 and nearly 3 gigabytes of email storage for free, rendering Bolt's email service obsolete.

Version 2.0

Bolt.com's second iteration was originally known as Boltfolio, a Bolt Media property launched in late 2005. Touted by itself as the leader of the "cult of creativity", Boltfolio intended to provide a one-stop shop for creative users to upload their own photos, videos, and music, as well as write blogs or record directly from a webcam. The original aim was to provide a simple set of tools that would attract users of like-minded creative sites such as DeviantArt, YouTube, and Flickr.

In December of 2005 Bolt Media finalized a deal to purchase InterMedia Inc., a small company focused on a video-sharing site, Yashi. Yashi and Boltfolio were integrated into one site, and in March of 2006 Bolt Media opted to focus the company on this new property. Thus Boltfolio became Bolt.com, bumping the existing Bolt.com site to the URL Bolt2.com. As 2006 wore on, creative Bolt members were featured less and less on the site, taking a back seat to videos produced by Bolt staff, popular music videos, and viral videos that also were appearing on competing video sites.

On October 17, 2006, one week after announcing a revenue-sharing deal with YouTube, Universal Music filed suit against Bolt Media and another video site, Grouper. Universal contended that both sites allowed and promoted their users to swap pirated Music Videos. Several weeks later, Bolt removed the music section from their site, without any explanation.

In February of 2007, Bolt Media announced that it would be selling itself to GoFish, another online video company, for $30 million. According to Aaron Cohen, Bolt's CEO, Bolt would once again change its focus from uploaded content to content creation; saying that the former was no longer "interesting business." Cohen and Bolt president Jay Gould are also involved in a new project, called WikiYou, which has received seed funding from First Round Capital and Mayfield Fund.NewTeeVee Article

The American Idol Effect

In 2003 Bolt was the official message board for FOX's American Idol during the second season. This created a swarm of new members signing up to only talk about American Idol. This did not sit well with the veterans, as the quality of discussion on the site greatly dwindled. FOX later created and maintained their own message boards for the third season, but cross promotion still continued with AI sponsored quizzes, avatars, and badges. By the fourth season, the cross promotion was gone, but the message boards were still created and maintained. There were no message boards created for the fifth season of American Idol.

See also

• List of social networking websites

External links

• Mashable
• Review Journal
• Detnews
• fuseaction
• Wall Street Journal
• Adage
• ValleyWag