Recently, I was reminded through a Youtube comment of Oosah. Oosah is the hub that syndicates your media files from all the major media-sharing platforms, and offers a 1gb memory space to upload your stuff on Oosah. At least that was the launching buzz strategy. The comment that reminded me of Oosah also pointed out to a very good question: What happened to Oosah?
Today, here is what Oosah’s homepage looks like:
Acquired? Transition? I probably spaced out on the company’s last blog post. Unfortunately, the company did not bother to write a post about it 🙁 I don’t remember receiving an email from Oosah that announced this (I just did an email search, and no sign of Oosah there). I actually got really into wanting to know what happened to Oosah when I realized that a bunch of people are wondering what happened to Oosah.
The last bits of news we got from Oosah was the site for iPhone users, and the release of an Android app. When Oosah previously launched a series of widgets, the writer of Widgets Lab expresed his skepticim towards the buzz strategy of Oosah:
This huge amount has garnered some skepticism, mine included because every service in the past who has ever offered big space for free just like that ends up in bankrupt in a year or less. This has not happened to Oosah and it is maybe because they not popular yet
So is it possible that Oosah’s buzz strategy was a money-bleeder? I don’t hold the charts in my hands, so I can’t really tell you. When I talked to Mike Duggan a year ago, he was considering monetizing the widget they would later launch. The widget wasn’t a big hit. Going mobile and selling paid apps is probably a safer bet for a company that provides a personable media environment. In the same post of Widgets Lab mentioned above, the blogger added:
while i still find hard to believe that their Freemium + Ads business model will hold them for the long haul with such a huge amount of storage they are giving away. they look to have a utility and user hosted media content angle they want to build on for the future.
Sure, I am still wondering though: Did Oosah got acquired and is preparing a come-back? or did they just set this banner up on their Website, stole all the fiber optic from their office and left for the South?
So will Oosah come back? You can cast your vote here:
Update A source close to the company told me they just ran out of money, but haven’t given yet on a long-term development project.