MISSION
Essembly was a non-partisan political social networking website that allowed its users to connect with one another based on political opinions, participate in unmoderated discussion, and organize for political action (which never really happened as far as I know).
FOUNDING
It was founded in 2005 by Joe Green, a Harvard graduate and college roommate of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of the collegiate social-networking site Facebook. Joe was an absentee owner for much of the time. He and most of the staff of Essembly moved on to a new venture called Project Agape which developed the "Causes" application on FaceBook. As a result of a lack of staff attention, the technical part of the site was iffy at times.
Essembly was in permanent beta. On January 30, 2010 Essembly let its lease on its domain lapse.
USERS
A July 2006 Newsweek article put the number of registered users at over 17,000. At the end, there were maybe 50 active members, if that.