Sampa, a secure, weblog-style site where families can post events, videos, pictures and stories, says it’s shutting down in August because the 4-year-old startup ran out of money. Founder and CTO Marcelo Calbucci outlined the reasons behind Sampa’s closure in a blog post today entitled “Sampa: From Birth to Death”:
“Sampa as a business was a failure because no matter how much we tried, it could not generate a profit at its current format.”
The startup is shutting down its servers on Aug. 17 and will liquidate thereafter, so Sampa users have a month to export their content from the site. We reviewed Sampa back in April 2008. In an email, Calbucci told us he’s “hopeful” that he’ll have another startup in the works soon.
Terrible to see a good company like Sampa go down. Check out ZooLoo.com. They offer everything Sampa had and a lot more, including the ability to use your own domain name.
What was their business model?
FamDing.com is a great family social networking site that offers some excellent features. These include video conferencing, photo albums, address book, message board, gift list, and recipe share. FamDing is pretty new, so they are constantly adding more family applications. Plus, it’s all free.
I will miss Sampa. I was a user, but no more will my page grow.
:-[
I found that http://www.familycrossings.com is a very user friendly alternative. Even more features than Sampa and really cool to use.