Short, Sweet And In Stealth Mode: Quip Is The Name Of Ex-Facebook CTO Bret Taylor?s Next Project

When Bret Taylor announced last June that he would be leaving his role as CTO of Facebook to work on a startup with another ex-Googler, Kevin Gibbs, little else was divulged about what that project would be?– except, as he told?AllThingsD, that it might cover an area he does not understand well as a consumer, a little like, you know, when he helped create Google Maps.?Today, a little more news began to seep out: the startup appears to be called “Quip”; Taylor started to redirect his backchannel.org site to the quip.com domain, but with invitation-only, restricted access; and there is some quiet talent recruitment taking place. We heard about Quip earlier today, and while we were trying to get through to Taylor to ask more, it seems that Business Insider heard about it, too. Now Taylor has responded to us — essentially, to note that the buck stops here for now: “We aren’t releasing anything and aren’t yet talking about what we are working on,” he wrote in an email. “I will be happy to talk when we are, though.” And for good measure, he’s now closed that little backchannel.org loophole that redirects it to quip.com, and backchannel.org has been taken offline altogether. Before the quip.com redirect disappeared, a Google apps login screen noted that Quip requested permission to view your email address, view basic account information, and manage your contacts. But as we note above, access to this was restricted. BI notes some other details that it has found on quip.com: It appears the quip.com domain changed ownership December 7 of this year. Quip has quietly registered on Twitter. An iPad app by the same name was rebranded to Tweetglass back in July because a European entity was claiming trademark infringement. But as BI points out this might be unrelated to Quip.com. Quip’s icon is a Q with a pen for the tail and a paper for the main o-shape — possibility that this means some kind of creating/writing app.   And here are the additional details I found: It appears that the Quip had a mini frenzy of activity this month. In addition to the domain switch, the @quip Twitter handle was only created on December 13. Between domain and Twitter registration, it seems that backchannel.org might have already started redirecting, attracting?a little attention?in the process. In addition to Bret Taylor and Kevin Gibbs, there is some impressive

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