Kelowna Tech Company, Two Hat, has been acquired by Microsoft. Read on to hear the announcement from Chris Priebe, Founder/Executive Chairman & Steve Parkis, CEO.
It started in 2012 with a bold, humble, and heartfelt belief that everyone should be able to share online without the fear of abuse or harassment. Inspired to action by the story of Amanda Todd, our founder, Chris Priebe, understood the critical importance of healthy, inclusive, and safe digital spaces for kids and founded Two Hat to solve these issues. He set out with two ambitious goals; build the best technology and find a partner who could help bring it to the world.
Over the last decade, as we scaled to over a trillion online interactions a year, we learned that the extent of this problem demanded that we expand our vision; healthy, inclusive and safe digital spaces need to be available for everyone. Fueled by unprecedented global events and social change, online communities have evolved beyond a product or platform, to something more valuable; a place for connection and a place to belong.
Our customers have continuously inspired us to accelerate our innovations to meet their growth and rapidly evolving online communication needs. We created one of the most adaptive, responsive, comprehensive community management solutions available and found exciting ways to combine the best technology with unique insights; resulting in a blend of AI/ML, linguistics, and industry leading community management best practices that enable our customers’ communities to be authentic and host engaging spaces without sacrificing self-expression. As a result, we’re now entrusted with aiding online interactions for many of the world’s largest communities.
While we are proud of how far we have come, we know that there is still so much to do. As we evaluated available paths and potential partnerships, one of our closest customer relationships, one that shares our commitment to providing a safer, healthier online experience, and has both the capability and drive to make global change happen became the clear path to achieving our aspirations.
We are thrilled to announce that today, Two Hat is joining Microsoft to accelerate and amplify our shared vision to be global catalysts for healthy, safe and inclusive online spaces.
We have partnered with Xbox and the Microsoft team for several years and share the passion and drive to make meaningful change in the advancement of online civility and citizenship. We are committed to ensuring safety, inclusion and online health & wellness are always at the forefront of our work and through joining Microsoft, we can provide the greatest concentration of talent, resources and insight necessary to further this vision.
Our incredible and diverse customers can expect that we will continue supporting them as we always have. As part of Microsoft, we will work to make that experience even better and ensure that we serve the broadest possible set of communities such that our impact meets our aspirations. We can’t wait to join Microsoft to further promote digital wellbeing for our customers and their communities.
This is just the beginning. Thank you to everyone who has believed in us, supported us, driven us, and inspired us. We’re thrilled and excited to begin this next chapter and continue to make the world a better place – one person to person online interaction at a time.
