# Thing Labs

**Canonical:** https://apis.io/providers/thing-labs/  
**APIs profiled:** 0

Thing Labs was an early consumer social-software startup founded in 2008 by Jason Shellen (previously a product lead on Blogger and a co-creator of Google Reader at Google). The company built browser-based social tools including Plinky (daily writing prompts), Brizzly and the Brizzly Guide (a web-based Twitter/social client), and Let's Be Trends. Backed by SoftTech VC (now Uncork Capital) alongside angel investors, Thing Labs was acquired by AOL in September 2010, after which Shellen became VP of Product for AOL's AIM & Messaging group. Thing Labs no longer exists as an independent entity and publishes no public developer portal, documentation, OpenAPI/AsyncAPI, or machine-readable API surface; this profile is retained as a portfolio-lead record for the API Evangelist network.

## Kin Score — 5.0 / 100 (minimal)

Scored 2026-08-21 under rubric 0.12.0. Trend: flat (+0.0 from 5.0).

| Facet | Score |
|---|---|
| Discoverability | 50.0 |
| Contract Quality | 0.0 |
| Governance | 0.0 |
| Contract Governance | 0.0 |
| Operational Transparency | 0.0 |
| Developer Ergonomics | 0.0 |
| Commercial Clarity | 0.0 |
| Access Clarity | 0.0 |

## Agent readiness — 0.0 (human-only)

| Dimension | Value |
|---|---|
| Spec Presence | no |
| Agentic Access | no |
| Reversibility Documented | no |
| MCP Server | no |
| Auth Clarity | no |
| Idempotency | no |
| Error Semantics | no |
| OpenAPI Examples | no |
| Rate Limit Signal | no |
| Event Surface Described | no |
| Agent Skills | no |
| Well Known Catalog | no |
| Consent Identity | no |
| Agent Card | no |
| Dry Run Mode | no |

## Access

Unknown — onboarding: unknown, pricing: unknown, trial: no (confidence: low).

## Tags

Company, Social Software, Consumer, Web Applications, Acquired, Defunct

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Profiled by [API Evangelist](https://apievangelist.com) and published on [APIs.io](https://apis.io/providers/thing-labs/). Scores are computed from the provider's own public artifacts under a published rubric.