Company History
Tagged Inc. was co-founded in mid 2004 by entrepreneurs Greg Tseng and Johann Schleier-Smith, who wanted to build a "Teen Yahoo or the next MTV". The pair had formerly co-founded internet incubator Jumpstart Technologies, which was later fined $900,000 for alleged violations of the CAN-SPAM Act, then the largest ever penalty for spam.
In September 2005 the company raised $1.5 million in angel investor funding and three months later raised an additional $7 million from Mayfield Fund, a venture capital firm.
Originally an under-18 site, Tagged allowed users of any age to join from October 2006.
In March 2008, Microsoft announced a commercial partnership with social networking sites Tagged, Facebook, LinkedIn, Bebo, and hi5 regarding email contacts APIs which has since been implemented. Other past and current Tagged partnerships have included Slide, RockYou, PhotoBucket, Meebo, Razz and Jangl. In February 2009, following complaints from the public Tagged was blocked in Qatar by the only ISP, Qtel, due to inappropriate content that Qtel could not selectively filter. Tagged.com had been one of the 10 most visited sites in Qatar.
In January 2010, Tagged announced that it was donating $50,000 to the Yéle Haiti Earthquake Fund, partly stemming from user donations. In the same month, Tagged won a $200,000 judgment against Erik Voegler, who was spamming other Tagged users.
In May 2010, Tagged was named in Lead411's "2010 Hottest San Francisco Companies", a list of the fastest-growing companies in the software, wireless, internet, and media industries, and in October 2010, Tagged ranked #100 on Deloitte's list of the top 500 fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and clean technology companies in North America.
In April 2011, Tagged acquired Digsby, a multi-protocol instant messenger and social network notification client for Windows with 3 million registered users. In September 2011, Tagged made a second acquisition, WeGame, an application for gamers.
As of October 2011, Tagged employs a staff of 150, having grown from 55 at the beginning of 2011. CEO Greg Tseng continues to interview employees, cater lunch and dinner, and hold officewide meetings every Friday. Tagged is a member of the Social Media Advertising Consortium, a trade industry association that aims to increase advertising revenue and to facilitate collaboration among social networking sites, advertisers and marketing researchers. It has been identified as a possible candidate for an IPO by 2013.
In November 2011, Tagged was named to the Forbes list of America's Most Promising Companies.
In December 2011, Tagged acquired Hi5 Networks Inc., which was once the third-largest social network behind Facebook and MySpace. The deal, terms of which were not disclosed, added Hi5's 230 million members to Tagged's base of 100 million registered users.
Also in December 2011, Tagged acquired Topicmarks, a natural language processing and machine learning company.
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