Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Video conferencing |
Founded | 1 May 2007 |
Founder |
|
Fate | Acquired; brand retired |
Headquarters | San Francisco, California, California |
Key people |
|
Owner | Telefónica Digital a subsidiary of Telefónica |
Website | www |
TokBox was a PaaS (Platform as a Service) company that provided hosted infrastructure, APIs and tools required to deliver enterprise-grade WebRTC capabilities. It did so primarily through its proprietary OpenTok video platform for commercial application.[1]
TokBox was founded by Serge Faguet and Ron Hose. Headquartered in the SOMA (South of Market) district in San Francisco, CA. TokBox was acquired by Telefónica Digital, a subsidiary of Telefónica, in October 2012.[2]
Server SDKs: OpenTok's server SDKs wrap the OpenTok REST API, and let developers securely generate tokens for their OpenTok applications. Officially supported libraries include: Java and PHP. Community supported and created libraries include: Python, Ruby On Rails, .NET, Node.js, Perl, Golang.[3]
Client Libraries: OpenTok's WebRTC client libraries enable video communications on a client platform. Officially supported libraries include: JavaScript, iOS and Android. Community supported and created libraries include: PhoneGap and Titanium.[4]
TokBox has a long history of active engagement with the developer community. It has sponsored numerous hackathons since 2010 such as TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon,[5] API Hack Day[6] and Music Hack Day.[7]
PennApps, one of the largest of such events, takes place on University of Pennsylvania campus every semester. Over a thousand students from around the world competed in the September 2013 edition of PennApps. Four sophomore students from Carnegie Mellon University with no prior hackathon experience built Classity to showcase real-time lectures on the web and won the “Best Use of TokBox API” award.[8]
Added document collaboration tool—Etherpad (now owned by Google)[citation needed]
TokBox was the subject of controversy when 50% of their engineering staff was fired in July 2009. This happened around the time TokBox changed CEOs. The VP of Marketing is stated as saying the firings were part of the CEO's new restructuring plan. None of the original founders are currently with TokBox.[14]