In a retrospective, even sentimental blog post, Jelli announced that it is shutting down the Jelli User-Controlled Radio platform and station apps. The plug will be pulled this Sunday at midnight (PDT), completing a pivot that started two years ago when Jelli began building a suite of ad-tech products for radio stations.
“It has been an amazing five year ride but all good things must come to an end,” the blog announcement begins. “We proved that we could change radio and reinvent the experience. However, in spite of our success, our social radio service didn’t take off nationwide as we had hoped. This has led the team to make the difficult decision to retire social radio and focus completely on a new innovation for the broadcast industry.”
Jelli’s new innovations include cloud-based ad-buying for radio inventory, ad-serving, and a campaign dashboard called RadioDash. (See RAIN coverage here.)
Jelli launched its original business in March 2008, and built up about 700,000 users. The company’s “social radio” platform enabled users to take control of a participating radio station by crowdsourcing requests, and voting songs into “rockets” (hence the Jelli logo) and “bombs.”