Scots social network Kiltr shuts down

The Kiltr website carries a message to members

Kiltr, a Scottish network set up with Scottish government funding to rival Facebook and LinkedIn, has shut down.

The service offered Scots, both at home and abroad, a platform on which to share content and form networks.

Its founders developed their own software and used Kiltr to host alternative politics and culture.

They took their message to American Scots through Tartan Week, and claimed a high profile during the 2014 independence referendum campaign.

In 2011, interviewed in The Herald, founders Brian Hughes and Stewart Fraser described the company as "a professional social networking service for Scots, affinity Scots, and business owners across the globe looking to tap into the Scottish market and develop relationships with organisations operating in Scotland".

Funding came from several venture capital backers, led by Paul Atkinson, owner of Par Equity.

New business model

One round, secured in 2010, the same year the site launched - was reported as having £1m funding from two private funds and the Scottish Investment Bank. The latter is controlled through Scottish Enterprise, the Scottish government's economic agency.

However, with tough competition from much bigger rivals, the company shifted to a different type of technology - helping retailers, pubs, clubs and restaurants to capture data from their visiting customers, to market products to them directly.

That business, now called CollectivWorks and based in Glasgow, will continue while the Kiltr site has been closed down.

A message was emailed by Brian Hughes, also chief executive of CollectivWorks, to those who had signed up to it, listing its achievements since 2010.

A similar message appears on the Kiltr website.