SodaHead.com

SodaHead was founded by Jason Feffer and Michael Glazer. Feffer had previously served as vice president of operations at MySpace, while Glazer was Feffer’s childhood friend. The company developed SodaHead.com as a United States-focused online destination for questions, opinions, polls, and discussion. Its early identity was primarily consumer-facing: members could submit questions, answer questions, vote, comment, exchange messages, and debate topics across politics, entertainment, religion, technology, business, and other subjects. The website also published staff-written opinion material and offered interactive features such as slideshows, groups, and message boards. The company was headquartered in El Segundo, California, and received backing from Mohr Davidow Ventures, Mission Ventures, Tech Coast Angels, and Ron Conway. It remained privately held and was associated with Prodege, LLC. SodaHead’s community model gave it a position between an opinion website and a social networking service, with user participation serving as the central product experience. SodaHead also pursued a business-to-business role by licensing or providing polling technology to media companies and publishers. Its reported media relationships included ESPN, Fox News, ABC News, Good Morning America, the Los Angeles Times, and Warner Bros. Television. Chris Dominguez, formerly senior vice president of business development at iFilm, became chief executive officer in 2010 and departed in 2014. During this period, SodaHead worked to develop products that could extend its polling capabilities beyond its own domain. In 2013, the company launched Pollware. The product was described as a custom, advertising-supported polling solution for third-party websites. Publishers could use polls to obtain audience participation and generate advertising revenue around the interactive units. Reported partners included Maxim, LakersNation, DodgersNation, Ranker, The Christian Post, and HNGN. This distributed model provided a potential alternative to relying only on traffic to SodaHead.com. On June 3, 2015, SodaHead sent registered users an announcement stating that the service would immediately stop supporting login, poll creation, commenting, and messaging. Users could still vote on polls created by the editorial team. The company said that limited human and financial resources required it to choose between maintaining the community and serving publishers, and that the publisher-oriented polling business showed stronger market fit. The announcement directed members toward SodaHead’s Facebook page for continued social activity. The change substantially reduced the functionality of SodaHead.com. Login attempts returned an account-disabled message, while posting and registration were no longer available. Public traffic measurements later indicated a pronounced decline in activity. The available historical material does not confirm the date of a formal corporate dissolution or provide reliable evidence about the brand’s current polling operations. SodaHead is therefore best documented as a former social polling community whose final clearly recorded strategic direction was toward distributed polling technology for online content creators.

• 2015

  Consumer community functions are disabled

  [1]SodaHead.comen.wikipedia.org

  SodaHead ends user login, new poll creation, commenting, messaging, and registration, retaining voting on editor-created polls while refocusing on publisher technology.

• 2014

  CEO leaves the company

  [1]SodaHead.comen.wikipedia.org

  Chris Dominguez leaves SodaHead after serving as chief executive since 2010.

• 2013

  Pollware launches

  [1]SodaHead.comen.wikipedia.org

  SodaHead introduces Pollware, an advertising-supported polling technology designed for third-party publisher websites.

• 2010

  Chris Dominguez becomes chief executive

  [1]SodaHead.comen.wikipedia.org

  Chris Dominguez, formerly a senior business-development executive at iFilm, becomes SodaHead’s CEO.

• SodaHead is founded

  [1]SodaHead.comen.wikipedia.org

  Jason Feffer and Michael Glazer establish SodaHead and develop an online opinion and polling community.

A participatory opinion platform that evolved from a consumer discussion community into a distributed polling technology provider for media companies and online publishers.

• Social opinion and discussion platform

  SodaHead.com community

  The original SodaHead.com service allowed members to pose questions, answer community questions, vote in polls, comment, message other users, and debate current issues. Its editorial and interactive content covered politics, religion, entertainment, celebrity news, technology, and business, with an emphasis on United States-oriented public opinion. Additional features included staff-written opinion essays, slideshows, groups, and message boards. Most social functions were disabled in June 2015.

• Distributed polling technology · 2013

  Pollware

  Pollware was SodaHead’s publisher-oriented polling product, launched in 2013. It was described as a custom, advertising-supported solution that could run on third-party websites. The model allowed media companies and other content publishers to present interactive polls to their audiences while earning advertising revenue from the surrounding experience. Reported partners included Maxim, LakersNation, DodgersNation, Ranker, The Christian Post, and HNGN.

• 2015

  Refocus from a social community to distributed pollingStrategy

  Background

  SodaHead stated that its limited human and financial resources made it difficult to operate the consumer community while also meeting demand from online publishers for polling technology.

  Action taken

  The company disabled login, new registrations, user-created polls, commenting, and messaging. It retained voting on editor-created polls and directed its business toward providing polling solutions to other content creators and publishers.

  Aftermath

  SodaHead.com no longer functioned as a conventional social network, and public traffic indicators later showed a sharp decline. The long-term status of the publisher technology business is not established by the available sources.

  Source

1. 1SodaHead.comen.wikipedia.org