LiveUniverse is very much alive, founder Brad Greenspan says
When is a start-up officially dead? When all of its employees have been laid off? When its website goes down for weeks? When the high-and-mighty tech-news site TechCrunch calls it dead?
Video-sharing site Revver and personalized home page Pageflakes, both part of Brad Greenspan's LiveUniverse collection of websites, went down on Thursday and stayed that way for more than three days. LiveUniverse.com, at the time of this writing, is still down, and callers to the phone number listed on the website can't get through. Greenspan, who was part of the company that launched MySpace, explained the Web problems in a way TechCrunch deemed too vague. So today TechCrunch declared the company dead.
I reached Greenspan this morning, and he says the West Hollywood company's heart is still a-thumpin', as are its 35 websites.
"All of the major sites are now up," he said, explaining that the problem was caused by the company moving data centers. He wouldn't reveal the new location, however, saying that he planned to issue a press release about it and didn't want to steal its thunder.
LiveUniverse last raised money in May. Greenspan says the company is "about to announce a brand-new product and partnership that will take us into a whole new area," namely next-generation social networking. The announcement will be in the next week, he said, and will involve "a very exciting technology that was announced recently." (A new technology that was announced recently... hmmm ... a tanning drug maybe?)
TechCrunch still doesn't believe that LiveUniverse is alive, however. It cites a Twitter message from a former employee saying the company was being shut down, and a few blog posts by entrepreneurs griping that LiveUniverse still owes them money.
So whom are you going to trust? The company's founder or the Interweb? These days, it seems to be getting more difficult to decide.
-- Alana Semuels
Photo: Is this monkey in Revver's offices dead or just hanging out? Credit: tv42 via Flickr
I'd say parts of Live Universe, at least, are still alive. Revver.com and it's offsite video serving seem to be functioning more or less normally (as I write this, at least). The Revver blog and the Revver forums have not come back online yet. I'm hoping that they are just hibernating a bit longer rather than truly dead.
Alive, however, is not necessarily synonymous with healthy. I hope that the move to the new servers is indicative of a commitment to resolving the technical problems that have plagued Revver for so long. I also hope that Live Universe can catch up on paying the Revver members to whom they owe money soon, thus applying a big bandage to that rather long running open sore.
There's still a lot to like about Revver, but I think it needs some intensive care before it can get a clean bill of health.
Posted by: Ted Kuik | February 03, 2009 at 11:01 AM
If they're still alive, then why haven't former employees gotten their 2008 W2 forms?
Posted by: Anon | February 06, 2009 at 10:07 AM
It's been two weeks since "next week" and so far no big announcement. Nevermind big announcement, it's been dead silent.
I'm hoping that LiveUniverse wakes up. I'm a member of one of their smaller sites, Blogexplosion.com, that has been suffering for some time. No one is acting as administrator of the site. The forums are filled with spam (including graphic pornography that is getting indexed by google). The users need someone at LiveUniverse to step up, at least long enough to appoint a few volunteer moderators.
Posted by: BE member | February 16, 2009 at 10:10 AM
BeMember: Don't hold your breath.
The phone number listed on the LiveUniverse web page has been disconnected. I think they're dead.
Posted by: Anon | February 16, 2009 at 10:39 AM
I just tried to have LiveUniverse served by the Beverly Hills Sheriffs Dept. for small claims court. It came back with a not found, moved, forwarding address unknown notice. If anyone knows of another address than the one at 9255 W. Sunset Blvd., please email me at mm@spiritart.com. Thank you.
Posted by: Marti Parry | March 25, 2009 at 02:02 PM
We are also searching for Brad Greenspan, his external accountant (if any) and his attorney. If anyone has information please post.
Posted by: Kace Clawson | March 30, 2009 at 08:26 AM
Brad Greenspan is ignoring my emails, so i am blogging about it.
He owes me $30'000 and i have it all documented in my Gmail account, i wish that people would come out with there stories on my blog, Because since it is very unlikely that he will pay anything, i want justice served one way or the other
Posted by: Victim | April 04, 2009 at 10:57 PM