Livefyre

Livefyre was established in December 2009 by co-founders Jordan Kretchmer and Henry Arlander, originating as a real-time commenting platform for bloggers. Kretchmer, who served as CEO, brought a background in creative direction and brand strategy from his time at advertising agencies and media companies, including Current TV and MullenLowe. This experience in marketing and media informed Livefyre's evolution from a simple commenting tool into a comprehensive audience engagement and content curation platform for enterprise clients.

The company's business model was centered on providing a licensed, software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform to major brands and publishers. Clients paid to use Livefyre's suite of tools to discover, manage, and display user-generated content (UGC) from social networks like Twitter and Instagram directly on their own digital properties. This enabled brands to integrate authentic social proof into their websites, advertisements, and digital experiences, aiming to increase user engagement, time on site, and ultimately, conversions. The service operated on a tiered package basis, with pricing metrics that included factors like page views and the volume of social media content collected.

Livefyre's product offering evolved significantly over the years. The initial commenting service grew into a broader platform featuring tools for live blogs, real-time chat, reviews, and polls. Its core capability was allowing marketers to curate UGC and visualize it in various formats such as media walls, carousels, and mosaics embedded on their websites. A key milestone was the acquisition of social storytelling service Storify in 2013, which enhanced Livefyre's ability to help brands create narratives from curated social media posts. Another major product launch was Livefyre Studio in 2014, a content marketing platform that served as a real-time CMS for user-generated content. Following strategic investments from Adobe and Salesforce, the platform became deeply integrated with major marketing clouds, positioning itself as a critical layer for unifying branded and user-generated content.

The company's growth trajectory led to its acquisition by Adobe in May 2016. Livefyre was integrated into the Adobe Experience Manager, part of the Adobe Marketing Cloud, to combine professionally created assets with real-time social content. However, citing challenges related to the changing dynamics of social media platforms, Adobe announced the end-of-service for Livefyre, and the platform was officially shut down on November 30, 2021.

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