IAC Subsidiary Proust Shutting Down At End of Month

Nearly two years after it was founded within Internet company IAC (Nasdaq: [[ticker:IACI]]) in New York, social scrapbook Proust.com will be no more. E-mails sent out Wednesday announced the website will shut down on Jan. 31.

Proust, for now, is an online scrapbook that lets users selectively share personal stories along with photos and videos from important moments in their lives. The website went public last July and got its name from French writer Marcel Proust. Co-founded in February 2010 by Tom Cortese and Jason Fotinatos, Proust operated as a startup within IAC.

The online personal scrapbook field has hefty rivals such as Ancestry.com and its MyFamily.com subsidiary. Facebook’s new timeline profiles, which chronologically organize users’ photos, videos, and status updates along with personal milestones, may have also put pressure on Proust.

IAC maintains a number of subsidiaries such as comparison shopping site Pronto, video sharing website Vimeo, and dating websites Match.com and OkCupid. IAC declined to comment when asked why Proust was set to shutdown.

Author: João-Pierre S. Ruth

After more than thirteen years as a business reporter in New Jersey, João-Pierre S. Ruth joined the ranks of Xconomy serving first as a correspondent and then as editor for its New York City branch. Earlier in his career he covered telecom players such as Verizon Wireless, device makers such as Samsung, and developers of organic LED technology such as Universal Display Corp. João-Pierre earned his bachelor’s in English from Rutgers University.