Twitter Co-Founder Launches New Startup: Lift

10 Cool Social Media Monitoring Tools

Moving on from the popular success Twitter, social media entrepreneur Biz Stone has announced, however guardedly, his next venture: a new social app called Lift. While details about the forthcoming app are sketchy at best, some interesting information is beginning to emerge.

In a blog post titled "Unlocking Potential" on the Obvious Corporation website, Biz Stone said, "Tony Stubblebine and Jon Crosby have created an interesting new application for unlocking human potential through positive reinforcement." Stone offered little more in the way of useful facts about the new venture, other than to say that he and partners Stubblebine and Crosby have "tried it and it works."

Tony Stubblebine, who is serving as CEO of Lift according to the company's email autoreply, had more to say on his Stubbleblog. According to Stubblebine, the venture is being funded through investments from Twitter's Evan Williams and Jason Goldman, in addition to Biz Stone. Stubblebine said Lift is "a long way from opening the doors," and that the fledgling company is currently seeking a user-experience design lead.

It's not yet clear what Lift will actually do, or who its target user will be. The three cofounders all come with deep social media pedigrees, with Stubblebine having most recently created the events-based social network Crowdvine and Crosby hailing from companies like Path, Songbird, and EngineYard.

Over on ReadWriteWeb, Marshall Kirkpratrick has uncovered what may be an interesting clue as to the company's underpinnings, noting that a previous Stubblebine venture, Mibbles, now redirects to Lift.do. Based on that information, one might surmise that Lift will offer a way for users to track their projects and daily activities socially while receiving awards for progress made against their goals.

Social productivity, if that is Lift's aim, is not a new field, but it's one that badly needs some significant leadership. However, Lift appears to be more broadly targeted at encouraging any kind of activity, business or personal.

Users can find out more about Lift by signing up at the company's website. While the site itself offers no useful information as of this writing, registering will get you an email from Tony Stubblebine, which reads, "We're not ready to let people in yet, but when we are, we'll make sure you get an early invite.

"What is Lift? We're interested in ways new technology can help unlock human potential, especially through the use of positive reinforcement. That's all we can tell you right now."

Attend Enterprise 2.0 Santa Clara, Nov. 14-17, 2011, and learn how to drive business value with collaboration, with an emphasis on how real customers are using social software to enable more productive workforces and to be more responsive and engaged with customers and business partners. Register today and save 30% off conference passes, or get a free expo pass with priority code CPHCES02. Find out more and register.