RapLeaf

Company

RapLeaf was founded in San Francisco by Auren Hoffman and Manish Shah in March 2005. In May 2006 the Founders Fund led a seed round of about $1 million, including angel investors such as Peter Thiel and Ron Conway.{{Cite web In June 2007 a second round included Founders Fund, Rembrandt Venture Partners and included Conway.{{Cite news

The company's first product was a meta-reputation system that allows users to create reviews and ratings of consumer transactions, which they then contribute to multiple e-commerce websites. On January 26, 2007, Rapleaf released Upscoop, a service that allowed users to search for and manage their contacts by email address across multiple social networking sites.{{Cite web

In 2011, Rapleaf created a data onboarding division named LiveRamp, which later spun out into an independent company which was acquired by Acxiom in 2014 for $310 million.

In 2012, Rapleaf began selling segmented data tied to email addresses for marketers to personalize email communications. Around September 2012 the company moved its headquarters from San Francisco to Chicago, and Phil Davis became chief executive, replacing Hoffman.

Rapleaf was acquired by TowerData in 2013.

Controversy and backlash

On May 15, 2006, eBay removed a number of auction listings where the seller had included links to Rapleaf, claiming they were in violation of its terms of use.{{Cite web |author-link = Michael Arrington

In late August 2007, Upscoop began e-mailing entire contact lists that were provided by their users when they log in. This caused some criticism,{{Cite web

On July 10, 2008, Rapleaf changed its interface so that it no longer allows users to search people by email addresses.{{Cite web |url-status = dead |url-status = dead

In October 2010, the Wall Street Journal reported that Rapleaf had transmitted personally identifiable information, including Facebook and MySpace IDs. Rapleaf said it had inadvertently transmitted that info and had ceased the practice.{{Cite news |author= Emily Steel |title= A Web Pioneer Profiles Users by Name On October 28, 2010, Facebook banned Rapleaf from scraping data on Facebook, and Rapleaf said it would delete the Facebook IDs it had collected.{{Cite web

A 2011 report said the company could tell the food preferences of employees of major companies.

Between 2007-2013, Rapleaf received significant backlash over the data collection practices and sale of individuals' personal information to advertisers. As a public spokesperson for the company, much of the criticism was directed at the CEO Auren Hoffman personally. A 2010 investigation by The Wall Street Journal revealed that the company transmitted identifying details about individuals to at least 12 companies, violating the terms of service of Facebook and MySpace. A spokesperson at Facebook said it had "taken steps. . .to significantly limit Rapleaf's ability to use any Facebook-related data." When confronted by The Wall Street Journal and CNet, it quietly revised its privacy policy both times. CNNMoney described RapLeaf as "selling your identity," and TechCrunch characterized its method of identifiable data extraction of Google and Microsoft employees as "creepy." RapLeaf later became known as LiveRamp after entering new markets. LiveRamp spun off the RapLeaf business and sold it to TowerData in 2013.

References

References

1. (July 10, 2006). "Notice of Sale of Securities". US Securities and Exchange Commission.
2. (June 1, 2007). "Rapleaf Secures Venture Capital Funding". Press release.
3. Matt Marshall. (April 24, 2006). "Networker Hoffman launches Rapleaf — to track your reputation beyond eBay". Venture Beat.
4. (2011-07-08). "RapLeaf CEO Hoffman Discusses New LiveRamp Solution And Company Strategy {{!}} AdExchanger". AdExchanger.
5. (2014-05-14). "Acxiom To Buy LiveRamp For $310M {{!}} AdExchanger". AdExchanger.
6. "Meet our Management Team". Company web site.
7. Aquino, Judith. (December 17, 2013). "Email Matching Solutions Promise To Connect Offline And Online Data". AdExchanger.
8. "Start-ups, privacy, and being wrong". link. Rapleaf Blog. Auren. Hoffman. (6 September 2007)
9. Robin Wauters. (March 22, 2011). "Googlers Buy More Junk Food Than Microsofties (And Why Rapleaf Is Creepy)". Tech Crunch.
10. "The rap on Rapleaf, the "trust meter" you can't trust".
11. (3 November 2010). "Online Behavior Tracking and Privacy: 7 Worst Case Scenarios".
12. Tim Faulkner. (September 18, 2007). "Can Auren Hoffman's Reputation Get Any Worse?". Gawker.
13. (9 April 2013). "Why is RapLeaf still tracking me across the Web?".
14. "The Creepy Company Compiling a File on Your Online Activity—Using Your Real Name".
15. (25 October 2010). "A Web Pioneer Profiles Users by Name". Wall Street Journal.
16. (18 October 2010). "Facebook in Privacy Breach". Wall Street Journal.
17. (26 October 2010). "Thousands of Web Users Delete Profiles from RapLeaf". Wall Street Journal.
18. "People search engine Rapleaf revises privacy policy".
19. (22 March 2011). "Googlers Buy More Junk Food Than Microsofties (And Why Rapleaf is Creepy)".
20. "Rapleaf: The company that sells your identity - Oct. 21, 2010".