Verbots Online

The hosted Verbots Online service was confirmed closed by September 12, 2012; the displayed day is a dated-confirmation proxy.

Sources and shutdown details ↘

Agents & workflow automation · Closed; date inferred · 12 Sep 2012 · Observed closed by · Not the verified service cutoff · Conversive, Inc.

The record

A hosted conversational AI service where creators deployed their own virtual personalities for visitors to chat with on the web, with animated voices and conversation logs.

Operator at shutdown: Conversive, Inc. Company source
Launched: 2006Launch source
Service end: Closed; date inferred · 12 Sep 2012Observed closed by · Not the verified service cutoffClosure source

Sources and verification

Chris Kenst — original publisher-team firsthand completion statement ↗ · Checked 28 Oct 2026

Verification notes

Shutdown: Chris Kenst identifies himself as an employee of the company publishing Verbots, while explicitly describing his blog as unofficial and personal. His July 31, 2012 post planned an August 31 end to hosted deployments and server-stored chat logs, with desktop Verbot Standard Edition and the community continuing. His September 12 post explicitly confirms that Verbots Online had officially shut down. The displayed September 12, 2012 day is an inferred dated-confirmation proxy, not a measured technical cutoff; the earlier planned August 31 day is not asserted as observed. The exact original posts were personally read in the native browser after reader failures. The 2014 accidental deletion of company and community websites is a separate event. Desktop software, SDKs and retained source code are outside this hosted-service closure scope. No per-bot, voice or desktop-version records are created. Agoura Hills is the publisher’s sourced 2010 West Coast business-contact city fallback, not a verified service office or headquarters. The mark is an explicitly labeled Conversive operator-wordmark proxy from that same original datasheet. Closure source
Dates checked: Announced 31 Jul 2012 · Verified 28 Oct 2026
AI functionality: AI functionality source
Launch: A member of the original team dates the hosted service to2006; the exact first day is unknown. Earlier desktop Verbot releases are a separate continuing distribution.
Location: United States · Agoura Hills. Conversive’s original 2010 datasheet lists its West Coast business contact in Agoura Hills. This is a labeled operator contact-city fallback. GeoNames city coordinates are separate from the business address. Location source · Coordinate source