Yuku
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Internet forum hosting service |
| Predecessor | ezboard, Inc. |
| Founded | 2005 |
| Fate | Acquired by Tapatalk and discontinued as independent service in 2017 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco , United States |
| Owner | Tapatalk (from 2016) |
| Website | www |
Yuku represented an advanced iteration of ezboard, Inc.'s online forums, promoted as "Message Boards 2.0" to emphasize its incorporation of Web 2.0 elements such as tags and RSS feed support.
Following its acquisition by Tapatalk, Yuku discontinued operation as an independent service in 2017, with all existing forums transferred to Tapatalk’s platform.
History
Yuku was introduced in an alpha version at DEMOfall 2005. At that time, Robert Labatt, then CEO of ezboard, Inc., revealed a profit-sharing scheme aimed at forum administrators, projecting monthly revenues between $3,000 and $5,000 for sizable community boards. This unveiling attracted attention from prominent media outlets including Computerworld, USA Today, Bloomberg, and CNN Money.
Further presentations occurred at BlogOn 2005—where Yuku earned recognition as a "Social Media Innovator"—and at the 2006 SFWIN 1.10 conference in San Francisco, highlighting the platform’s integration of message boards with blogging capabilities and support for multiple user profiles per individual.
On February 13, 2008, Yuku was acquired by KickApps, followed by a transfer of ownership to Inform Technologies Inc. on December 24, 2010.
Later, on September 8, 2011, Crowdgather, Inc. took over Yuku’s domain name, website infrastructure, and related assets including ezboard domains and associated forums. In 2016, Tapatalk purchased Yuku and finalized the migration of all hosted boards to its own system by July 2017, shifting from conventional forum layouts to a group-oriented design.
Pricing
Similar to ezboard, Yuku provided free forum hosting supported through advertisement revenue.
Features
Yuku offered several notable functionalities:
Profiles, message boards and blogs
User profiles on Yuku were interactive, allowing options such as adding or removing friends, posting comments, and sending private messages. Each user account could maintain up to five distinct profiles.
Customization of profiles, forums, and blogs was possible via selectable themes or through custom HTML and CSS coding. The Mini Profile displayed essential user details like name, location, and age; additional customizable sections could include maps (powered by Google Maps), favorite links, multimedia content, blog posts, tags, friends lists, recent contributions, and comments.
Image hosting
Users were allocated 30MB of complimentary image storage space; premium accounts expanded this limit to 100MB. Profile pages featured image galleries with slideshow capabilities.
Points
In September 2010, the platform transitioned its reputation system from Kudos to Points. Unlike a per-forum basis, Points were accumulated network-wide. Users could endorse topics positively by awarding points both to the discussion thread and its author.
The Yuku Hall of Fame showcased the top 100 users ranked according to their Points totals.
Tags
Tags functioned as keywords attached to discussions to enhance searchability and enable users to filter content based on specific terms.
Feature voting
The Feature Voter tool empowered users to influence development priorities. For instance, integration with Photobucket was implemented early due to popular user requests.
Technology
Yuku’s backend was primarily developed using PHP, while client-side interactivity relied extensively on Ajax. When JavaScript was disabled in the browser, core functions remained operational albeit simplified—for example, the WYSIWYG editor was replaced by a basic text editor and menu items were fully expanded rather than hidden behind dropdowns.