Declassified records

Case index

Every investigation, numbered and preserved.

  1. ICF-0002

    Historical Investigation

    Vine: A Breakout Video Format That Never Became a Durable Business

    Vine moved from startup to cultural force with unusual speed. Founded in June 2012 and acquired by Twitter before it publicly launched, it entered the market in January 2013 with a simple proposition: six-second looping videos made on a phone. Within months it had become the top free app in the U.S. App Store, and by August 2013 Vine said it had reached 40 million registered users.
    Unresolved26 sources · 14 min
  2. ICF-0001

    Historical Investigation

    Google Reader: From Experimental Feed Reader to Strategic Casualty

    Google Reader began in October 2005 as a Google Labs product built for reading syndicated web content, but it did not remain a simple RSS utility for long. Over the next several years, Google expanded it into a broader platform for consuming, organizing, and sharing information across desktop, mobile, and offline contexts. The product’s official history shows a team shipping frequent updates: interface redesigns, analytics, embedded media, offline access, mobile adaptations, and increasingly social features.
    Unresolved24 sources · 14 min