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Deathwatch
From Archiveteam
The Deathwatch is meant to be a central indicator of websites and networks that are
shutting down, or to serve as an indicator of what happened to particular sites that shut
down quickly. New sites should be added in chronological order, newest death date
first. Forward-looking death dates should be added to the first list only. Sites large
enough to warrant additional information will receive a dedicated page, linked from
here.
Contents
1 Watchlist
1.1 Pining for the Fjords (Dying)
1.2 Pre-emptive Alarmbells (Likely To Die)
1.3 Other Endangered Species
1.4 Just When You Least Expect It
1.5 Eleventh Hour Reprieves and Reanimations
2 Dead as a Doornail
2.1 2012
2.2 2011
2.3 2010
2.4 2009
2.5 2008
2.6 2007
2.7 2006
2.8 2005
2.9 2004
2.10 2003
2.11 2002
2.12 2001
3 Links
3.1 Other Sites Remember the Dead
3.2 Tragic
3.3 Humorous
Watchlist
Pining for the Fjords (Dying)
Berlios.de will shut down at end of 2011 (http://www.berlios.de/) . The site hosts
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thousands of open source software projects (git, svn, bzr, mailing lists, bug
tracking, etc). Instructions for exporting a project. (http://developer.berlios.de
/docman/display_doc.php?docid=2056&group_id=2)
The Centralstation Community has closed
(http://community.thisiscentralstation.com/_Central-Station-v2-Q38As
/blog/5449967/126249.html) . The site is a UK-based social network for artists and
creatives that provides hosting for content and portfolio. Users are being advised
to back up their work as the new version of their platform will rely on existing
media hosting sites like Flickr, Vimeo, and Soundcloud.
Apple MobileMe, iDisk, iWeb, and included services. This major website and
these services will shut down in 2012 (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4597) ,
simply because web hosting is boring and they want to focus on the exciting
"iCloud".[1] (http://www.apple.com/mobileme/transition.html) [2]
(http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4597)
BBC websites: According to "Erase and rewind" (http://adactio.com/journal/4336/)
(Jeremy Keith) and "BBC online website closures" (http://www.guardian.co.uk
/media/2011/jan/24/bbc-online-website-closures) (Guardian UK), the BBC is
planning on deleting 170 of its in depth programming-related websites. This isn't
170 pages, but an indeterminate number, possibly approaching thousands of
pages. Over at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org
/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28idea_lab%29&diff=prev&
oldid=413634746#BBC_imminent_deletion_of_170_of_its_websites__Wikipedia_plan.3F) , work to identify all affected articles happened, resulting in a
list of doomed links (http://en.wikipedia.org
/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_doomed_but_actively_referenced_BBC_links) and a list of
articles with doomed links (http://en.wikipedia.org
/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_articles_with_doomed_BBC_links) . There is a free torrent
listed at the end of Ben Goldacre's post (http://bengoldacre.posterous.com/nerdsaves-entire-bbc-archive-for-399-you-can) , but it's not set up for either local use or
installing on a server, and seems to be missing a large amount of material.
Yet another Yahoo service is shutting down. Delicious[3]
(http://www.delicious.com) will be shutting down soon (http://daringfireball.net
/linked/2010/12/16/delicious.php) . The whole team was let go yesterday - 15
December 2010. Slashdot link (http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/12/16/2220225
/Yahoo-To-Close-Delicious)
Yahoo is planning to close FoxyTunes (http://www.foxytunes.com/) "soon" in
favour of Yahoo! Music. Thankfully, this doesn't mean much, as FT always had a
small following and no significant data is stored there, but it does mark yet another
closure of a Yahoo product for seemingly no reason.
IGN has announced (http://hosting.ign.com/faq.php) that it will shut down all IGN
hosting on August 31, 2009. This includes fan sites hosted on GameSpy and
ClassicGaming.
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Google Buzz will be shutting down soon. Luckily Google released a tool to
download your content from it called Google Takeout: https://www.google.com
/takeout/
Besides Buzz, Google will be shutting down many of its other services, such as
Aardvark, Sidewiki, and others: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/fallspring-clean.html
Pre-emptive Alarmbells (Likely To Die)
dl.tv [4] (http://dl.tv) There is no new tech podcast on here for over a year. Good
idea to start backing up all podcast on this site. Same for Crankygeeks. [5]
(http://www.crankygeeks.com/)
Google Video threatened to remove all hosted videos with two weeks' notice in
April 2011. It backed down after criticism and an archive effort by the Archive
Team.
Citizendium's finances running low (http://en.wikipedia.org
/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-11-08/News_and_notes) [IA (http://classicweb.archive.org/web/*/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-11-08
/News_and_notes) ] [W (http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://en.wikipedia.org
/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-11-08/News_and_notes) ]
. Projecting from its current
funding, it looks like it may not survive 2011 (http://en.citizendium.org
/wiki/CZ:Donate) .
cyberpunkreview.com: 80s science fiction fansite and community
http://cyberpunkreview.com/ [IA (http://classic-web.archive.org/web/*/http:
//cyberpunkreview.com/) ] [W (http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://cyberpunkreview.com/) ]
hasn't seen much staff activity in a long time, although the forums are going
strong.
Archive Team is declaring Yahoo! no longer a trustable entity. Prove us different,
Yahooligans. Or... don't.
AOL plans to either sell or close Bebo by June. http://www.clickz.com/3640014 [IA
(http://classic-web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.clickz.com/3640014) ] [W
(http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.clickz.com/3640014) ]
,
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2010/04/aol-says-bye-bye-bebo.html [IA
(http://classic-web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2010/04/aol-says-bye-byebebo.html) ] [W (http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2010/04
/aol-says-bye-bye-bebo.html) ]
WikiLeaks (http://wikileaks.org/ [IA (http://classic-web.archive.org/web/*/http:
//wikileaks.org/) ] [W (http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://wikileaks.org/) ]
) has an
uncertain financial situation, and the site was inaccessible for some time in 2010.
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FriendFeed (http://friendfeed.com/ [IA (http://classic-web.archive.org/web/*/http:
//friendfeed.com/) ] [W (http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://friendfeed.com/) ]
) has been
purchased by Facebook, leaving FriendFeed users uncertain as to its future.
Going to call this one before it even starts, friends: Legacy Locker
(https://www.legacylocker.com/) promises lifetime control of your data and
return of your data to loved ones for just $300 for "lifetime", or $30/year. [6]
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03
/10/AR2009031001211.html) Archive Team says to just say No.
The Pirate Bay (http://www.thepiratebay.org/ [IA (http://classic-web.archive.org/web/*
/http://www.thepiratebay.org/) ] [W (http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http:
//www.thepiratebay.org/) ]
) still having persistent legal problems. The tracker went
down in November, but the site still serves torrents and magnet links. If a torrent
is lost, it becomes impossible to connect to other computers distributing the
shared files. Considering that there are links to TPB on THIS VERY PAGE, this is
pretty dang important.
Ning (http://www.ning.com/) has laid off 40% of staff and seems to be running
out of money [7] (http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/15/nings-bubble-bursts-no-morefree-networks-cuts-40-of-staff/) . There is certainly some networks worth archiving
among the 2 million networks[8] (http://blog.ning.com/2010/01/2-millionning-networks.html) they host. Grouply[9] (http://blog.grouply.com/grouplywelcomes-ning-networks/) and Posterous[10] (http://blog.posterous.com/posterouscommits-to-building-a-ning-blog-imp) say they are going to offer migration tools.
Omploader (http://ompldr.org/) , an anonymous file upload site, has announced
that they are about $2500 in the hole on hosting costs, and that there is possibility
of their shutting down if donations do not improve. It stands to reason that there
are some files among their database that are worth saving. An attempt to contact
the administrator for more information and to be given a dump of the site was
made, and he responded saying he'd be happy to rsync a copy of the data after
some legal issues have been settled.
go.to (http://go.to/) , an URL shortener, has all of its domains on sale on Sedo. No
official word just yet, though.
Other Endangered Species
MUDs (Multi User Dungeons) are losing their history due to the notability
guidelines of Wikipedia (http://www.offworld.com/2009/01/mud-history-goingdown-wikis-m.html) . If you want to write wiki-style articles about MUDs, you
might want to consider contributing them to one of the existing MUD wikis
(Mudpedia (http://www.mudpedia.org) , MUD Wiki (http://mud.wikia.com) , etc.)
instead.
Encyclopedia Astronautica (http://www.astronautix.com) is the most
comprehensive collection of the history of space travel. Period. Seriously, the
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official NASA history folks will refer you this website if they can't answer your
questions. However, Mark Wade (the sole creator/maintainer) abandoned his blog
at the end of 2007, and the Encyclopedia has not been updated since May of 2008,
despite much happening in the space exploration world since then.
All of the 1UP Network and related properties were bought by UGO recently,
and should be watched carefully. [11] (http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2009/01
/06/egm-closed-ziff-lays-off-30/)
h2g2 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/) - "H2G2 is a constantly expanding,
user-generated guide to life, the universe and everything. The site was founded in
1999 by Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams." There are plans
to buy h2g2 from the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/A80173361).
Just When You Least Expect It
Archive Team keeps a list of Healthy Sites that could be fine today and not so hot
tomorrow. We focus on ways to back your personal data off these sites so you don't
put yourself at unnecessary risk.
Eleventh Hour Reprieves and Reanimations
Cli.gs, another URL shortening service, announced closure: "On Sunday, 25 Oct
2009 at 12:00:00 GMT, the service will stop accepting new short URLs and will
stop logging analytics."[12] (http://blog.cli.gs/news/cligs-shutting-down) In
December 2009, it was announced that the "social bookmarking" site Mister Wong
has acquired cli.gs and are keeping it running.[13] (http://blog.cli.gs/news/misterwong-acquires-cligs) All aboard the TinyURL project.
tr.im became the largest URL-shortening service to announce closure[14]
(http://blog.tr.im/post/159369789/tr-im-r-i-p) - then hastily recanted[15]
(http://blog.tr.im/post/160697842/tr-im-resurrected) and came up with a new
solution[16] (http://blog.tr.im/post/165049236/tr-im-to-be-community-owned) . All
aboard the TinyURL project, and 301works.org (http://www.301works.org
/post/207681240/301works) .
Home of the Underdogs went under on Feb 9th[17] (http://flashofsteel.com
/index.php/2009/02/13/rip-hotu/) . There has been some passed along words by the
site's owner, now working at an NGO, that an attempt to bring it back may happen.
(She definitely has backups of the site.) A community-driven effort to revive the
site is currently underway [18] (http://www.hotud.org) . Backups were restored,
and the remaining files (1,000+) collected from the community. As of Jan 4th 2010,
HOTU is reporting that files are back online [19] (http://www.hotud.org/component
/content/article/25133-files-online-and-import-done)
JPG Magazine announced it would shut down on January 5, 2009 [20]
(http://jpgmag.com/blog/2009/01/jpg_magazine_says_goodbye.html) , but the site
lives lives on under new ownership (http://jpgmag.com/blog/2009
/02/an_exciting_future_for_jpg.html) . Feel free to download the torrent
(http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4624703/)
Filefront.com is closing up shop [21] (http://farewell.filefront.com/) . The site will
be suspended on March 30, 2009. 1.5 Million files and 48+ TB of space gone just
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like that. UPDATE As of April 2, 2009, it looks like there may have been an 11th
hour reprieve for Filefront. According to a message reportedly from the original
founders of the service [22] (http://welcome.filefront.com/) , the site has been
re-acquired by them in order to prevent its proposed shuttering.
Word Count Journal (http://www.wordcountjournal.com/about [IA (http://classicweb.archive.org/web/*/http://www.wordcountjournal.com/about) ] [W (http://www.webcitation.org
/query?url=http://www.wordcountjournal.com/about) ]
) is shutting down on June 11, 2011
UPDATE The site is fully up and running. (checked on October 21, 2011)
UPDATE2: Non-functional, but the website is up with this notice "Word Count
Journal is no longer being supported." (checked on January 26th, 2012)
Dead as a Doornail
2012
The popular file hosting service Megaupload has been shut down in January 2012;
with it, Megavideo too is gone. It was mainly used for copyright infringement, but
lots of perfectly regular files were hosted on it.
2011
Google Labs (http://labs.google.com) closed on (somewhen august/sebtember?)
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2388881,00.asp#fbid=7kZ39-1XQUH and
many great/experimental one of a kind tools vanished. Among many others "google
sets" that had been around since a long time, "City Tours" some includeing user
generated content and the exciting "google squared" http://4.bp.blogspot.com
/_ZaGO7GjCqAI/SibWbewOy5I/AAAAAAAAQBM/8lb7UA6AWPY/s640/googlesquared-species.png that was an approach to pass more artificial intelligence to
the user than conventional searchengines (compareable to wolframalpha) but
seemingly based on a bigger/vast pool of data just like standard google
searchresults). Since there is hardly any obvious rationale(?) for closeing down
"Google Labs" it pictures google as beeing either less supportive or even hostile to
new inoventions and less responsible with usergenerated content or more
secretive about their ongoing projects than one might thought before or than
Google might was before indeed. 1 Jan 2011 Whatsgoingonwithgoogle 18:06, 17
October 2011 (UTC)
The wiki hosting site wik.is, hosted by MindTouch, shut down on the first week of
January 2011; the explanation being that "in order to continue to support the
growing needs of our MindTouch Express users, we are offering MindTouch
Cloud", which "opens up additional features and functionality that are not available
in Wik.is.". The only way you'd know all that is if you receive a warning e-mail from
MindTouch. They offer to keep your site running by "upgrading to our paid Cloud
version by filling out this short form. (http://campaigns.mindtouch.com
/Wik.isDecomissioningMigrationInterest.html) "
ProHosting (http://free.prohosting.com) closed hosted sites on 1 Jan 2011
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The Sims Carnival: January 17th, 2011[23] (http://www.simscarnival.com/games
/CarnivalMonkey/35068/The-Sims-Carnival-Says-Goodbye)
Gaia Community (http://team.gaia.com/blog/2010/3/importantgaia-announcement) shut down at the end of March.
Ghost Cloud Computing (http://ghost.cc/) became a ghost of itself[24]
(http://ghost.cc/home/SignUp.jsp) .
Microsoft closed Windows Live Spaces on March 16, 2011. Spaces owners had
the option to migrate their blogs to WordPress or to make copies. As of January 4,
2011, they could no longer edit their existing Spaces.[25] (http://explore.live.com
/windows-live-spaces-help-center)
Yahoo! Video shut down on March 31st, 2011 and was reborn as a video portal.
Encyclopedia Dramatica shutdown on 16. April 2011 without warning. Ongoing
reconstruction Efforts. A lot of Images and Articles are probably lost. (The
replacement OhInternet is a very strongly sanitized Version of ED.) ED is claiming
that they are in danger of shutting down. Despite the controversial nature of many
articles hosted on the wiki, this would be a big loss of historical records.
A lot of the Images and Pages are still missing. Help appreciated.
Yahoo! has announced (http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/24/yahoo-to-shutdown-mybloglog-on-may-24/) [IA (http://classic-web.archive.org/web/*/http://techcrunch.com
/2011/02/24/yahoo-to-shut-down-mybloglog-on-may-24/) ] [W (http://www.webcitation.org
/query?url=http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/24/yahoo-to-shut-down-mybloglog-on-may-24/) ]
that
MyBlogLog will be closed on 24 May 2011. UPDATE: Yup.
Prodigy Pages shut down on June 1,2011.
Forums.starwars.com: StarWars.Com (http://www.starwars.com) [IA (http://classicweb.archive.org/web/*/http://www.starwars.com) ] [W (http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http:
//www.starwars.com) ]
[IA
announced (http://forums.starwars.com/ann.jspa?annID=3)
(http://classic-web.archive.org/web/*/http://forums.starwars.com/ann.jspa?annID=3) ] [W
(http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://forums.starwars.com/ann.jspa?annID=3) ]
the closure
of their forums (http://forums.starwars.com) [IA (http://classic-web.archive.org/web/*/http:
//forums.starwars.com) ] [W (http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://forums.starwars.com) ]
on
June 3, 2011. (Forum will lock on 29 April 2011) tf.n report (http://theforce.net
/latestnews/story/StarWarscom_Forums_Shutting_Down_In_June_137497.asp) [IA
(http://classic-web.archive.org/web/*/http://theforce.net/latestnews/story
/StarWarscom_Forums_Shutting_Down_In_June_137497.asp) ] [W (http://www.webcitation.org
/query?url=http://theforce.net/latestnews/story
/StarWarscom_Forums_Shutting_Down_In_June_137497.asp) ]
2010
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The Symbian Foundation (http://www.symbian.org/) will shut down its
websites, Twitter account, Facebook page, bug trackers and remove access to its
source code on 17 Dec 2010[26] (http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/27/symbianfoundation-axing-websites-on-december-17th-source-repos/) [27]
(http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/Symbian_Foundation_web_sites_to_shut_down) .
It Died (http://itdied.com/) by Glenn Fleishman. a site dedicated to indicating
sites that have died, itself died. (Keep the RSS Feed (http://itdied.com/atom.xml)
around in case that changes, though).
isweb lite, the Japanese Geocities, shut down on October 31. Thousands of
personal homepages of artists and illustrators were deleted forever. A tiny sample
of the pages deleted: [28] (http://togetter.com/li/64058) isweb itself (paid hosting!)
will shut down in May 2012. [29] (http://portal.faq.rakuten.co.jp/app/answers/detail
/a_id/15387/)
Vox (http://closing.vox.com/) shut down at the end of September 2010.
Storytlr (http://storytlr.com/) , a lifestreaming site, stopped hosting March 1st
2010.
Platinum (http://platinum.ac) , once a popular Finnish web site associated with
electronic dance music, clubbing/raving, and the other related things was closed in
March after been running for years. All the content posted to the forums of the site
was, however, obtained and made available by Klubitus (http://klubitus.org) ,
another related portal popular in Finland.
Kid Radd (http://www.kidradd.com) was a notable and quite popular webcomic
which vanished when AT&T discontinued their Worldnet service. Thankfully, an
archive is available, e.g. here (http://tangent128.name/depot/kid_radd.zip) .
BrightFuse (http://www.brightfuse.net) was a small social network started as a
side venture by CareerBuilder.com in August 2009. It was quietly shutdown
November of 2010 without much fanfare. At its height it has 100k users.
2009
Google acquired Etherpad (http://etherpad.com) on 4th December, 2009 and
immediately announced (http://etherpad.com/ep/blog/posts/google-acquires-appjet)
a March 2010 content deletion date. After community pressure, Google has
decided to open source the Etherpad codebase (http://etherpad.com/ep/blog/posts
/etherpad-back-online-until-open-sourced) , keeping the service alive until then.
The site closed down shortly after. Fortunately there are now are numerous
(http://www.google.com/search?q=etherpad+alternatives) alternatives
(http://www.google.com/search?q=etherpad+clone) .
favrd, a website that aggregated favorite tweets from twitter, abruptly shut down
on December 6, 2009 with absolutely no warning, killing off thousands of
highlighted entries added by group-consensus over significant months. As a reward
for their efforts, founder Dean Allen wrote this helpful message: "Alas, stars on
Twitter have become mere take-out menus hung on the doors of other restaurants.
There are still lots of clever and funny things to read every day, but finding these is
no longer a challenge â you already follow your sources. Sites like this one now
serve mainly as fuel for emotional up-fuckedness in the guise of a game. Just an
idea: next time you see something you like, write the person who made it a note
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telling them so. Even better, explain why. Take care!" Advice to people who want to
work with Dean Allen's projects in the future: don't.
here.is seems to permanently off-line. It ceased to re-direct email for some time
ago and as per 11-23-09 it doesn't redirect even URLs any longer.
Microsoft Encarta, the online
encyclopedia with a 15+ year history, is
being shut down. The US version will shut
down on October 31, 2009 and the
Japanese version on December 31, 2009.
[30] (http://www.reuters.com/article
/CMPTRS/idUSLV28230720090331)
GeoCities: Shock! Repeat Offender Yahoo
announced that it would close GeoCities
"later this year...We'll send you more details
this summer." [31] (http://help.yahoo.com
/l/us/yahoo/geocities/geocities-05.html) .
The plug was pulled on October 26th 2009.
See the Geocities project page for more details.
Microsoft's SoapBox has announced it is getting off said soapbox on August 31,
2009. [32] (http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/07/soapbox-microsoftsyoutube-dies-on-august-31-2009.ars) .
ArchNacho's & TortillaGodzilla's Quality ROMs, a site that hosted ROMs for
NES, SNES, and Genesis games, which has announced its effective death back in
January of 2006, is now finally completely inaccessible, both on its original domain
(http://www.qualityroms.com), and on the site that the domain masked
(http://home.no.net/qualrom/). Archive.org has mirrors (http://web.archive.org
/web/*/http://qualityroms.com) of the site up through August 30, 2007, which is
after all updates to the site ceased. All ROMs hosted on QualityRoms are included
in the mirror and can be downloaded from there.
Microsoft's Popfly [33] (http://popflyteam.spaces.live.com
/blog/cns!51018025071FD37F!336.entry) pops off into nowhere on August 24,
2009.
Yahoo! 360 announces [34] (http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog1qCkw2Ehaak.hdNZkEAzDrpa4Q--?cq=1) that they are closing up shop on July 13,
2009. Of course, you can still register an account but that's the first thing you're
told.
Imeem, a site for sharing music and convincing yourself that what you're hearing
is good, announced (http://blog.imeem.com/2009/06/25/simplifying-imeem/) on
June 25, 2009 that they were "simplifying" things and deleting all user-generated
photos and videos uploaded by users. They gave everyone five days to get their
photos off, and then extended it to twenty days from the ensuing hue and cry. The
uploaded videos had no way to extract them back.
Rejaw, a microblogging platform, has announced that it will be shutting down on
May 31 2009 [35] (http://rejaw.com/rejaw/shout/OOfs2wUaLql) . It's gone.
Jumpcut.com (http://www.jumpcut.com) became the latest example of Yahoo!'s
awesome respect for history and data, announcing the closure of the video hosting
and editing site, for June 15, 2009. A software utility has been released to allow
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you to download the movies from Jumpcut. Otherwise, you are not in great shape Yahoo says you can move your videos to Flickr, but Flickr cuts off at 90 seconds. A
lot of homemade video is going to disappear.
MSN QnA Beta closed on May 21 [36] (http://liveqna.spaces.live.com
/blog/cns!2933A3E375F68349!2244.entry)
Coghead (http://www.coghead.com) , " a web-based service for building and
hosting custom online database applications and a software as a platform 'utility
computing' company", announced it had closed up on February 20, 2009, and that
the site would go down permanently on April 20, 2009. [37] (http://blogs.zdnet.com
/collaboration/?p=349) . It did.
Furl (http://furl.net/) was a social bookmarking service that had been around
since 2004. It was acquired by Diigo (http://diigo.com/) (announced on March 9),
allowed people to opt into transferring their bookmarks to Diigo, and shut down on
April 17. Diigo blog post (http://blog.diigo.com/2009/03/16/welcome-furl-users/) ;
Techcrunch post (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/09/diigo-buys-webpage-clipping-service-furl-away-from-looksmart/) .
Spiralfrog (http://www.spiralfrog.com) , "a FREE service that lets you
download over 3 million songs and videos, legally and safely", pulled up stakes in
the night and completely shut down on March 20, 2009. [38]
(http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/03/ad-based-music-service-spiralfrogcroaks.ars) Things looked so promising in 2006: [39] (http://arstechnica.com
/old/content/2006/08/7611.ars) Oh, and sadly, all your music you downloaded from
them will stop working within 30 days or less. [40] (http://arstechnica.com
/old/content/2007/09/spiralfrog-debuts-with-free-ad-supported-musicdownloads.ars)
It doesn't get more ironic than this: Upline
(https://www.upline.com/) , a HP-owned
online backup service, is being shut
down.[41] (http://news.cnet.com
/8301-17939_109-10173136-2.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5) They
almost immediately turned off the backup process, and then announced all your
restorable data would go offline on March 31, roughly 30 days after
announcement. Surprise!
Yahoo Briefcase, a positively ancient site run by Yahoo that provided you with 25
free megabytes of storage space for your junk, sent a mail to what were likely
years-old contact addresses to tell them they had a little more than a month to get
their files out, March 30, 2009. After that, the files would be deleted. What, Yahoo
doesn't have a spare memory stick to store what must be the amount of files in this
service for the next year?
Yahoo! Farechase, an airline fare aggregation and searching site, was shut down
on March 25, 2009. It had previously been it's own company, founded in 1999, and
02/03/2012 11:48 AM
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http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Deathwatch
purchased by Yahoo! in 2004. [42] (http://news.cnet.com/Yahoo-buys-travelcompany/2100-1032_3-5300561.html)
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/) was put up
for sale (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/395463_newspapersale10.html) ,
but found no buyer, and the print edition stopped on March 17th 2009 after 146
years. [43] (http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/columnists/zeeck/story
/591181.html) Initially, reports indicated it would shut down the website as well as
the paper, but a plan was apparently in place to run a "skeleton crew" on an
internet-only site, which continues to operate.
Videosift (http://www.videosift.com) had a combination database and backup
failure, losing: "All votes, ever. All member usernames who registered later than
around 12 months ago. All member rankings. Your member profile info (e.g., bio,
favorite sift, etc.), if any. All activity that happened on the site yesterday, March
11." This is unlikely to kill the site, but an awful lot of data was lost.
Scoopt (http://www.scoopt.com/) , a "citizen journalism" site run by Getty
images to allow the uploading of images by citizen journalists and the chance to be
licensed to news organizations, announced they would no longer take any new
imagery after February 6, 2009, and will shut down completely on March 6, 2009.
Some content uploaders "may" be contacted about being absorbed into the main
Getty site.
The Rocky Mountain News
(http://www.rockymountainnews.com/)
has shut down as of February 27, 2009.
[44] (http://www.rockymountainnews.com
/news/2009/feb/26/rocky-mountainnews-closes-friday-final-edition/) We're
watching to see what happens with the
website (and the material, and the
newspaper itself). With a 150 year history,
there's a lot of backstory, and how this
chronicler of history will end up, so too will
many others. There is an excellent
documentary about the last days of the
Rocky Mountain News here
(http://www.vimeo.com/3390739) .
Electronic Gaming Monthly has recently
shut its doors. [45]
(http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2009/01
/06/egm-closed-ziff-lays-off-30/)
Culture11 (http://culture11.com/home)
ran out of money.[46]
(http://www.patrolmag.com/scanner/1263/culture11-is-over)
Lycos Europe shut down their Tripod hosting service on February 28, 2009. [47]
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01
/18/AR2009011800224.html) [48] (http://www.paidcontent.co.uk/entry/419-lycoseurope-killing-tripod-customers-warned-to-back-up/) Note that Lycos Europe are
distinct from Lycos.com. Lycos Europe is also shuttering the social networking
02/03/2012 11:48 AM
Deathwatch - Archiveteam
http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Deathwatch
site Jubii as of February 15, 2009. [49] (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01
/18/lycos-kills-jubii-while-theyre-at-it/) A Danish version of the site will remain open
for the time being.
Windows Live shut down the MSN Groups on February 23. They extended their
original date from February 21st to give Group owners the weekend to prepare.
[50] (http://windowslivewire.spaces.live.com
/Blog/cns!2F7EB29B42641D59!34861.entry?sa=503427140)
ma.gnolia.com (http://ma.gnolia.com/) had a catastrophic disk
corruption/failure on January 31, 2009. From the message on the main site: "As I
evaluate recovery options, I can't provide a certain timeline or prognosis as to to
when or to what degree Ma.gnolia or your bookmarks will return; only that this
process will take days, not hours." Ma.gnolia had an excellent export feature...
hope you used it and did the backups they didn't!
Domino Magazine (http://dominomag.com/) , a style/interior design magazine,
announced that they were shutting down on January 28, 2009. My Deco File
(http://mydecofile.dominomag.com/) , one of the site's heavily used social
bookmarking features (somewhat like delicious for images) will remain up for a
few weeks to allow users to save their stuff.
Yahoo Pets was shut down and redirected with absolutely no notice around
January 27, 2009. [51] (http://blog.dogster.com/2009/01/28/yahoo-quietly-shuttersyahoo-pets-grin/)
totse.com closed its doors (http://www.totse.com/) on January 17, 2009. As of Jan
20th, a mirror exists (http://totse.danladds.com/) , alongside a repository of the
totse text files (http://totse.danladds.com/text/) .
Ficlets.com (owned by AOL) has announced they are closing on January 15, 2009.
[52] (http://www.peopleconnectionblog.com/2008/12/02/ficlets-will-be-shut-downpermanently/)
Circavie.com (owned by AOL) has announced they are closing on January 15,
2009. [53] (http://www.peopleconnectionblog.com/2008/12/03/circavie-will-beshut-down-permanently/)
Several Google services have shut down. [54] (http://www.readwriteweb.com
/archives/google_giveth_and_it_taketh_away.php) Most importantly, Google Video
stopped accepting new uploads (to avoid competition with Google-owned
YouTube), and Google Catalog Search was erased.
Co.mments.com closed down on January 11, 2009.
AOL Pictures said so long on January 9, 2009. To their credit, you can still yank
your stuff into other photo services until June of 2009. (At least, according to their
goodbye letter.)
2008
Overview of 2008 Technology News (http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=11227)
Biggest Botched Shutdowns of 2008
12 of 17
AOL Hometown (http://www.peopleconnectionblog.com/2008/11
/06/hometown-has-been-shutdown) (owned by AOL) was officially killed on
October 31, 2008. Jason wrote about it. (http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1617)
02/03/2012 11:48 AM
Deathwatch - Archiveteam
http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Deathwatch
Digitalrailroad.net,
a photo hosting site,
gave their users a
24-hour eviction
notice on October 27,
2008. They shut
down 10 hours after
the 24-hour notice.
[55]
(http://news.cnet.com
The full extent of warning AOL gave about shutting down
Hometown.
/8301-17939_109-10078042-2.html)
Other deaths of 2008
13 of 17
Lively (http://www.lively.com/goodbye.html) , a 3D Avatar space experiment,
was killed in a really crappy way by Google on December 31, 2008.
Pingmag (http://pingmag.jp/) , the magazine from Tokyo about "Designing and
Making things," simultaneously rang in the new year and checked out of existence
on December 31, 2008.
Mixwit (http://blog.mixwit.com/) said goodbye on December 27, 2008. [56]
(http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10126057-2.html)
Castle Cops (http://www.castlecops.com/) put away their badges on December
23, 2008. [57] (http://www.idf50.co.uk/clubhouse/computer-room/15996-castlecops-closed-down.html)
Google Research Datasets, shut down on December 19(?), 2008. [58]
(http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/googlescienceda.html)
Yahoo! Kickstart, a social
network for college students
revealed in 2007 [59]
(http://mashable.com/2007/08
/30/yahoo-kickstart/) got
expelled on about December
18, 2008. [60]
The last person at Yahoo! Kickstart turning off the
lights.
(http://www.techpluto.com
/yahoo-kickstart-shutdown/)
Flip.com, a social network
for teenage girls, shut down on December 16, 2008. Users were advised to print
out their digital scrapbooks as backups. [61] (http://news.cnet.com
/8301-1023_3-10112021-93.html)
Pownce (http://pownce.com/) was closed on December 15, 2008.
I Want Sandy (http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy/topics
02/03/2012 11:48 AM
Deathwatch - Archiveteam
http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Deathwatch
/a_fork_in_the_road_an_important_announcement_about_i_want_sandy)
(WEBCITE) (http://www.webcitation.org/5eFA58kqN) was shut down on December
8, 2008. A lot of people complained about this one, while others thanked the site
for shutting down and wished the founder well!
Yahoo Live! (http://live.yahoo.com/) died on December 3, 2008. [62]
(http://news.cnet.com/8301-13515_3-10081486-26.html)
OurWorld (http://ourworld.cs.com/sfrederick2/index.htm?f=fs|Compuserve)
slipped into history on October 31, 2008.
BlogRush.com (http://blogrush.com) failed to provide bloggers with the traffic
they so desperately desired, and the creator admitted on October 29, 2008 that his
4AM idea may not have been so brilliant. [63] (http://mashable.com/2008/10
/29/blogrush-shutdown/)
Wallop (http://wallop.com/) , Microsoft's attempt at starting a social network,
died on September 18, 2008. All that remains is a few Facebook apps. [64]
(http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10041856-36.html) [65]
(http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/15/wallop-takes-a-leap-into-the-deadpool/)
Yahoo! Mash, a social networking site, became mush on September 28, 2009,
after 30 days warning. [66] (http://mashable.com/2008/08/28/yahoo-mash-hasbeen-quashed/)
ScribbleWiki wikis go offline.
Virtual Magic Kingdom closed its gates (http://www.intercot.com/discussion
/showthread.php?t=130548) on May 21, 2008. [67]
(http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2008/04/disneys-virtual.html) The amount of
broken hearts and anguish over this move was amazing, and a warning sign to any
family-oriented site that encourages families to join up.
Think Secret (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Secret) was killed by Apple
and shut down on February 14, 2008. [68] (http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/12
/apple-and-think.html)
Uber.com was a social blog site that died. [69] (http://news.cnet.com
/8301-13577_3-10052301-36.html)
Social.fm couldn't stand up to Last.fm, and died. [70] (http://news.cnet.com
/8301-13577_3-10005554-36.html)
Brijit.com, a news aggregation site, closed on May 15, 2008. It might be closed
for good. [71] (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-9945059-36.html)
Yahoo! Design, a showcase of designing and information aesthetics related to the
Yahoo! properties, got revised into oblivion in February, 2008 as part of a 1,000
employee layoff. [72] (http://infosthetics.com/archives/2008/02
/rip_yahoo_design_closed_down.html)
2007
14 of 17
Yahoo! Podcasts, a Podcast searching site founded in October 2005 [73]
(http://www.ysearchblog.com/2005/10/09/listen-to-the-internet-with-yahoopodcasts/) , was closed with no explanation on October 31, 2007. [74]
(http://searchengineland.com/yahoo-podcasts-to-close-the-sorry-state-of-podcastsearch-12288)
OiNK's Pink Palace (http://oink.cd/) Music Bittorrent tracker site with huge
02/03/2012 11:48 AM
Deathwatch - Archiveteam
http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Deathwatch
user community which cared greatly about digital content and music. Would have
been a great resource for the industry to research. Shutdown October 23, 2007.
[75] (http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2007/10/oink)
BBC Jam (http://jam.bbc.co.uk/) was suspended (http://news.bbc.co.uk
/2/hi/uk_news/education/6449619.stm) March 20, 2007 and will not be coming
back (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/feb/28/bbc.digitalmedia) .
Yahoo! Photos, a photo sharing service by Yahoo!. Tools: Download Hi Resolution
Yahoo! Photos (http://smart-techie.com/yahoo/) by Rohit Sud (http://smarttechie.com/web/) , Download Yahoo! Photos (http://kentbrewster.com/downloadyahoo-photos/) by Kent Brewster, and Yahoo! Photos Grabber (http://yandao.com
/yahoograb/) by Yandao.com (http://yandao.com)
2006
2005
http://IUMA.COM (Internet Underground Music Archive), of Santa Cruz,
California, the actual first website to offer free hosting of bands including MP3
files of music offered by the bands, was mostly archived by John Gilmore before
going down. At least one IUMA founder now has a copy of that archive.
2004
2003
http://mp3.com went down. Much of it was archived by John Gilmore.
2002
2001
SixDegrees.com, a social network service website that lasted from 1997 to 2001
The Useless Pages (at IA (http://replay.web.archive.org/20000612123540/http:
//www.go2net.com/useless/index.html) )
Links
Other Sites Remember the Dead
15 of 17
Ghost Sites of the Web (http://www.disobey.com/ghostsites/) by Steve Baldwin. RSS
Feed (http://www.disobey.com/ghostsites/atom.xml)
Techcrunch's Deadpool (http://www.techcrunch.com/tag/deadpool/) is an excellent
archive of stories about site closings.
Deletionpedia (http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=Main_Page)
saved the articles deleted from Wikipedia in 2008, and Wikidumper
(http://wikidumper.blogspot.com/) preserves a selection of them.
02/03/2012 11:48 AM
Deathwatch - Archiveteam
http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Deathwatch
Tragic
"Russia Web site owner killed after arrest" - article at CNET News
(http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10029798-38.html)
Humorous
16 of 17
"Dating website's miscalculated publicity attempt" - article at New Zealand Herald
(http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=10448650)
[view (http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Template:Navigation_box)
] [edit (http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Template:Navigation_box&
action=edit) ]
Archive Team
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Deathwatch - Archiveteam
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