Echo has a long history of doing a lot of great stuff, sometimes it’s hard to keep up! During the week Boris posted about the need to constantly re-introduce yourself which made me think, maybe we should do that too!

Here are some common questions I get from people who’ve known about us for a while, but haven’t quite kept up with the news…

Echo? I thought you were JS-Kit?
No we haven’t been called JS-Kit for 2 years. JS-Kit is over. The company is simply called ‘Echo’

Ok and you do comments?
No, we haven’t done comments for over a year.

Really? What do you do then?
We provide a new kind of database called ‘StreamServer’. It’s a hosted service that is designed to handle the huge new volume and velocity of activity data happening on the social web and beyond. (watch the launch event)

Activity Data?
Yes, the kind of thing that you see on a Facebook wall, a Twitter timeline or a Google+ Stream. Comments, checkins, ratings, poll responses, status updates, video plays, ratings – you name it can all be captured, stored and served from our database to end-users. In Real-time.

Real-time?
Yes, when there is new data in the database, the website or mobile app using StreamServer will update immediately with no need for the user to refresh the page. (learn more)

Who uses this kind of thing?
So far we are very successful providing this kind of infrastructure to major media companies like Reuters, ESPN/ABC/Disney, Universal Music Group, NBC Universal, Discovery Worldwide etc. In fact we serve up to 50,000 real-time search queries per minute. Last month we served 1 billion search API requests.

There’s no reason why Echo only works in media though, it can, and has, worked for ecommerce, finance, brands etc.

And what do they do with it?
They build custom real-time apps with it like highly tailored commenting systems, news feeds, live blogging, forums, chat, topic radars, social TV, Q&A, media galleries and much more (learn more). It helps them increase engagement, time spent, user retention and ultimately profit. It makes their sites the first, best place to engage with their content/vertical/category.

Startups are also using it to power their real-time activity feeds instead of spending precious time and money building and scaling their own code. (learn more)

Is that it?
Not even close…

We also work with startups who build shrink wrapped real-time products and sell those through an App Store.

We also work with companies who might provide interesting services on top of the database (like authentication, spam detection, game mechanics, visualizations etc) and help them interoperate with StreamServer out of the box.

We sell both of these things into our existing customer base. We’ve helped companies be born, launch a product and sell into the biggest media companies in the world; all within 3 months. And most importantly they can scale.

How hard is it to use?
It isn’t. We’ve had major media companies build a SocialTV application in 3 days with 1 engineer.

Why is this important?
Well, we believe that the world is moving from static pages to real-time streams. To do this, companies need access to the kind of infrastructure that Twitter and Facebook have spent millions to build. Just like EC2, customers can turn on Echo StreamServer and deploy real-time apps that scale quickly. We’re helping to make all websites and apps as cool (engaging and profitable) as Facebook and Twitter!

So you’re not a commenting company?
Nope

So what kind of buzzwords/hot trends is Echo involved in?

• Data Portability: All our APIs use open standards in and out. In fact we might be the largest consumer and producer of ActivityStreams anywhere. Echo also invented a new open standard for single-signon called Backplane.
• Turning Mainstream Media, Social: Real-time storytelling
• Big Data: We process and store millions of status update and serve them to millions of users – it’s a HUGE data and scale problem.
• Cloud/SaaS: Echo is sold entirely as a hosted service.
• New/NoSQL Databases: StreamServer is a new kind of database designed to store and serve new scales of data.
• Social TV: Many of the county’s largest TV networks use Echo for SocialTV applications. In fact Echo is probably deployed across more networks than any other company. Discovery, USA, BravoTV, IFC, AMC, WeTV, Showtime, ABC etc.
• Social: Echo is powering the social infrastructure of the sites that users actually visit.
• Real-time/Social Search: Getting data out of Echo’s StreamServer database requires a search query. In essence, all the streams we produce are real-time search results.
• Aggregation: Echo and its partners aggregate data from across the social web – Tweets, FB Status Updates, GetGlue checkins and so much more.

How big is the team?
We are 30 people. We are hiring like crazy!

What’s the one line pitch?
Akamai for the Real-time web

And the name of your company again?
Echo