BackType

BackType was a San Francisco-based software company and social-media analytics service launched in August 2008 by Christopher Golda and Michael Montano. It began as a focused tool for discovering and searching blog comments, allowing users to aggregate discussions from many blogs and locate comments by topic or author. The company subsequently broadened its coverage of web conversations through BackType Connect, which let users enter a URL and identify comments and other responses published across the internet. The service could also associate tweets with the referenced page, including cases in which users had shared shortened versions of the URL. BackType developed a further product called BackTweets, a dedicated search site for conversations on Twitter. BackTweets enabled users to search Twitter activity by keyword or URL, giving publishers, marketers, and other organizations a way to observe how links and subjects were being discussed on the rapidly growing microblogging service. This placed BackType within the early generation of social-media monitoring businesses that attempted to turn fragmented public conversations into searchable data and business intelligence. The company was initially bootstrapped and received $15,000 in seed funding from Y Combinator in 2008. It later raised $300,000 from True Ventures in 2009 and just over $1 million in March 2011 from a group that included True Ventures, Lowercase Capital, Founder Collective, K9 Ventures, Freestyle Capital, and 500 Startups. These funding amounts are reported for the respective financing periods and are not publicly traded-company financial results. BackType's technical work became significant beyond the branded products themselves. The distributed data-processing systems built to collect, process, and serve large volumes of social and web data helped provide the basis for what became known as the Lambda architecture. At its peak, the company reportedly stored approximately 25 terabytes of compressed binary data, representing more than 100 billion individual records, while its application programming interface handled an average of about 400 requests per second. Engineers at BackType also created Apache Storm, a distributed stream-processing framework written predominantly in Clojure. Twitter later open-sourced Storm, and the Apache Software Foundation made it a top-level project in 2014. Twitter acquired BackType on July 5, 2011, for an undisclosed amount. Following the acquisition, BackType's technology and personnel were integrated into Twitter. The standalone BackType services were subsequently discontinued, leaving the company as a defunct independent brand while some of its engineering work, particularly Storm, continued to influence large-scale data infrastructure. BackType is therefore remembered both as an early social-conversation analytics provider and as the origin of technology that became important in real-time distributed data processing.

BackType launched in August 2008 as a software service aimed at making online conversations easier to discover. Its original focus was blog comments, which were distributed across individual websites and generally difficult to search as a unified body of material. BackType aggregated comments from multiple blogs and allowed users to search them by subject or author. This initial product established the company's core proposition: collecting public discussion data and making it useful for research, publishing, marketing, and audience analysis. The company then extended its service with BackType Connect. Rather than beginning with a person or topic, users could submit a URL and find comments and other responses published in relation to that page across the web. The product also connected tweets to the URLs they referenced, including shortened links. This approach anticipated later social-listening tools that treated links as durable objects connecting discussions across different platforms. BackType also introduced BackTweets, a separate site for searching Twitter conversations by keyword or URL. At a time when Twitter's public content was becoming increasingly important to publishers and businesses, BackTweets offered a specialized way to monitor references and link activity. The broader BackType product family consequently covered blogs, websites, and Twitter rather than relying on a single social network. BackType was nominated in the best bootstrapped startup category at the 2008 Crunchies before it had raised substantial venture capital. It received $15,000 from Y Combinator in 2008, followed by $300,000 from True Ventures in 2009. In March 2011 it raised slightly more than $1 million from several Silicon Valley investors, including True Ventures, Lowercase Capital, Founder Collective, K9 Ventures, Freestyle Capital, and 500 Startups. Stephen Cohen, a co-founder of Palantir Technologies, was also added as an advisor during this period. The company had an importance beyond its consumer-facing search interfaces. Its engineers developed distributed data-processing methods for handling a very large stream of social and web records. At peak scale, BackType reportedly stored about 25 terabytes of compressed binary data and more than 100 billion individual records. Its API served roughly 400 requests per second on average. These systems became associated with the Lambda architecture, a design approach that combines batch and real-time processing for large datasets. BackType engineers also created Apache Storm, a distributed stream-processing framework written mainly in Clojure. Twitter later open-sourced the technology after acquiring BackType. Storm subsequently became a top-level Apache Software Foundation project in 2014, giving BackType's engineering work a continuing role in the development of open-source data infrastructure. On July 5, 2011, Twitter acquired BackType for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition ended BackType's independent corporate development and shifted its technology and staff into Twitter. The standalone services were eventually shut down or absorbed, while some of the company's infrastructure work continued through Twitter and the open-source Storm project. BackType is therefore best understood as a defunct early social-media analytics brand whose technical legacy outlasted its original products.

• 2014

  Apache Storm reaches top-level project status

  [1]BackTypeen.wikipedia.org

  Apache Storm, created at BackType and later open-sourced by Twitter, becomes an Apache top-level project.

• 2011

  Additional venture financing

  [1]BackTypeen.wikipedia.org

  BackType raises just over $1 million from a group of venture investors.

• 2011

  Twitter acquisition

  [1]BackTypeen.wikipedia.org

  Twitter acquires BackType on July 5 for an undisclosed amount.

• 2009

  True Ventures financing

  [1]BackTypeen.wikipedia.org

  BackType receives $300,000 in venture financing from True Ventures.

• 2008

  BackType launches

  [1]BackTypeen.wikipedia.org

  BackType launches in August with a service focused on aggregating and searching blog comments.

• 2008

  Y Combinator seed funding

  [1]BackTypeen.wikipedia.org

  The company receives $15,000 in seed funding from Y Combinator.

Searchable, data-driven monitoring of public conversations across blogs, websites, and Twitter.

• Blog-comment search and social-media analytics · 2008

  BackType

  The original BackType service aggregated comments from blogs and made them searchable by topic or author. It addressed the fragmented nature of early web discussion, giving users a consolidated way to discover commentary distributed across many independent sites.

• URL-based conversation discovery

  BackType Connect

  BackType Connect allowed a user to enter a URL and locate comments and related responses published across the web. It also identified tweets referring to the page, including references made through shortened URLs, linking web discussions with social sharing activity.

• Twitter conversation search

  BackTweets

  BackTweets was a dedicated search site for Twitter conversations. It supported searches by keyword or URL and was designed to help users track how links and subjects were being discussed on Twitter.

• Developer API

  BackType API

  BackType provided programmatic access to its conversation data. The API supported the company's broader analytics model and reportedly handled approximately 400 requests per second at peak scale.

• Distributed stream-processing framework

  Apache Storm

  Apache Storm was created by BackType engineers as a framework for distributed, real-time stream processing, using predominantly Clojure code. Twitter later open-sourced it, and the Apache Software Foundation made it a top-level project in 2014. Storm is a technical legacy of BackType rather than a continuing BackType-branded product.

• 2011

  Accept acquisition by TwitterM&A

  Background

  BackType had developed social-conversation search products and large-scale data-processing technology as Twitter's platform was becoming increasingly central to online discussion monitoring.

  Action taken

  Twitter acquired BackType on July 5, 2011, for an undisclosed amount. The company and its technology were integrated into Twitter.

  Aftermath

  BackType ceased operating as an independent brand. Its standalone services were eventually discontinued, while Apache Storm continued as an open-source technology after being released by Twitter.

  Source

• 2011

  Expand from comment search into broad conversation analyticsStrategy

  Background

  The company's initial blog-comment focus limited coverage to one form of online discussion, while users increasingly needed to follow conversations across websites and Twitter.

  Action taken

  BackType introduced BackType Connect for URL-based cross-web discovery and BackTweets for searching Twitter conversations by keyword or URL.

  Aftermath

  The product portfolio broadened from comment indexing into social-media monitoring and link-centered analytics before the Twitter acquisition.

  Source

1. 1BackTypeen.wikipedia.org