Back in September of 2013, Google had purchased Bump. Which is the mobile contact and file sharing service, that basically allows you to touch your phone to another one to share information. Hence the name Bump. Now we’re three months into the acquisition, and Google has said that they are shutting down on January 31st, along with their second product Flock. According to a blog post from Bump’s CEO and co-founder David Lieb.
According to the CEO of Bump, the reason for this decision is that his team is now “deeply focused” on new projects within Google and don’t have the resources or time to devote to innovating on either project. The company is planning to pull their apps from both Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store on January 31st. After that date, neither app will work and all data will be deleted. Thus making both apps unusable.
For those that are still using the apps, you can export the data by accessing either of the apps and following the appropriate instructions. You’ll receive an email containing a link that, when clicked, will download the photos, videos, contacts and other content you’ve stored within each service.
Bump has been around for ever. I remember hearing about it when I got my first smartphone back in 2009. It was a pretty popular app and people used it to exchange contact information by bumping their mobile devices against each other. It was like using NFC before we knew what NFC was. The company then created Flock, which was a group collaboration app that enables users to curate photos and videos across a specific event or occurrence. Which was a pretty cool app, but it was really short lived, unfortunately.
How many of you have been users of Bump or Flock, or do you still use either of those apps? Let us know in the comments below.