Tickle.com

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Tickle Inc.
Type	Public
Founded	1999
Headquarters	San Francisco, California, U.S.
Owner	Monster.com
Website	tickle.com
Available in	multilingual
Current status	active

Tickle Inc. is a media company, providing self-discovery, and social networking services. Formerly known as Emode.com, Tickle was founded on the idea that personal insight and connections to others can be scientific, fun and profitable.

Tickle survived the dotcom bust of 2000, became profitable in early 2002, was acquired by Monster Worldwide in May 2004 and is now part of the overall Monster network. In April 2008, it was announced that Tickle.com will be shut down at the end of June 2008 ^[1].

1 History
2 Products and services
3 Closing
4 References
5 External links

[edit] History

Tickle was founded in 1999 as Emode.com by James Currier (who has since left the company), focusing on quizzes and tests for both entertainment and self-discovery. It was an early example of viral marketing, with tests such as the "What Breed of Dog Are You?" receiving heavy traffic from word-of-mouth and pass-along emails. It had a reputation for using an aggressive and arguably deceptive pop-up campaign. Accordingly, critics charged that Tickle's reputation and practices tarnish the commercial goodwill associated with its clients/advertisers, who appear ordinarily protective of their brands.

[edit] Products and services

Today, the company employs more than 50 people and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company is trying to rebrand itself as a service that provides tests created by PhDs collaborating with "experts" in their respective fields. Such PhDs and "experts" include Jennifer Bruning Brown and psychologists from Harvard, Yale, Duke, Northeastern, Washington University in St. Louis, University at Albany, SUNY and The University of Kansas.

Tickle's tests are divided into nine main channels. The channels are Entertainment, Style, Careers, Relationship, Mind & Body, Teens, Lifestyle, Family and PhD-Certified. Tickle offers over 200 tests, 50 of which are PhD-certified.

Users may message each other and discuss similar scores they may have gotten. They may also upload pictures and write about their hobbies, likes and dislikes, etc. on their profile.

[edit] Closing

On June 6th, an e-mail was sent out to registered members, advising them of the site's closing. Here is the Content Of The E-Mail:

"Dear Tickle User,

We will be shutting down Tickle as of June 30th 2008. You will no longer be able to access your saved test results after that date. If you would like to keep your test results, please print them out before that date. Many thanks for your understanding!

This email is for informational purposes solely and will be sent only once. There is no action required from your side, you don't have to delete your user account or cancel your subscription; Tickle will do this for you. You will no longer be invoiced beyond June 30th 2008 if you have a paid subscription for our PhD tests. This is an electronically generated email. Please do not reply to this email, as it will not be answered. If you have any further questions, please consult our support team at support@uk.tickle.com." Copyright 2008 Tickle, inc. All rights reserved. 799 Market St, 7th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94103