Site deaths are one of the big reasons why you should own your own identity and content on the web.
Site Deaths
This is a chronology of content hosting sites that have died, terminating millions (billions?) of permalinks, and breaking the web accordingly. This specifically for content hosting sites which permitted end-user posting. Not random sites nor "app" sites (e.g. if Gmail went away we wouldn't list it here).
Upcoming
Expected/announced site deaths. Move to past as site deaths occur. Soonest first:
This is a partial list, please add more, e.g. from other sources like ArchiveTeam Watchlist.
- any time now Twistory [1]
- Not accepting new users as of 2012-11-07
- Paying users will no longer be billed, and have "several months" to download a .csv of their data
- any time now Mixel [2]
- App removed from Apple's App store, network shutting down early September.
- current Mixels can be shared, bulk export functionality on its way
- any time now Apple MobileMe Gallery, iDisk, iWeb downloads.
- any time now Plazes downloads.
- ExpoRrt available (for who knows how long) - "you can download and keep your Plazes history" (checked as of 2012-07-05)
- 2012-06-30 site officially shut down. See below.
- 2012-07-20 KLIK - last day to login and download photo archives
- Going down with the Face.com api due to acquisition by Facebook
- 2012-09-02 picplz - last day to login and download photo archives[4].
- site already shut down 2012-07-03
- 2017-04-30 Google and Facebook "might completely disappear"[5]
Past
This is an incomplete list. Please help by adding examples from these sources (in particular when user authored content was lost):
In reverse chronological order:
2013
2012
- 2012-10-31 Batch.com photo sharing site shut down. article
- 2012-10-12 DailyBooth photo sharing site shut down. article
- 2012-07-03 picplz has shut down[8].
- 2012-09-03 "Photo archives will be available until September 3, 2102" (ibid)
- picplz shut down planned [9]
- 2012-06-30 Plazes. [10]
- Export available (for who knows how long)
- 2012-06-30 Apple MobileMe Gallery, iDisk, iWeb[11],[12],email
- as of 2012-07-05 on http://www.me.com: "For a limited time, you can still move your account to iCloud, download your photos from Gallery, and download your files from iDisk."
- who knows how long you can still get your data.
- "Closed." screenshot(on Flickr).
- 2011-06-06 Apple Support Communities: What happens to iWeb when there's no Mobile Me?
- Note first comment: "FYI, Apple is deleting some topics pertaining to people voicing their opinions on iWeb and iDisk. Just be careful."
- 2012-05-30 Tabblo shutdown by HP. Was at http://tabblo.com
- ??? number of photos lost (Archive Team has "almost everything" and is posting them to Archive.org)
- ??? number of "tabblos" (collection of photos) lost
- ??? number of links to photos / tabblos broke
- 2012-01-31 All original Tabblo employees gone (from HP) as well as those they directly hired.[13]
- 2007-03-23 HP acquired Tabblo[14].
- "five million pictures" (at time of acquisition)
- 2006-06 Tabblo launched. (ibid)
- 2012-05-01 Google Knol discontinued - was at knol.google.com
- 2012-10-01 Download your Knol - til 2012-10-01.
- ??? number of Google Knol pages lost
- ??? number of links to Google Knol pages broke
- 2008-07-23 Google Knol launched to the public.[15]
- 2007-12 Google Knol private beta launch.(ibid)
- 2012-04-30 Google Wave shut down.[16],[17]
- 2012-01-31 Google Wave went read-only.(ibid)
- ??? number of Google Waves lost
- ??? number of migrated Etherpads lost
- ??? number of links to Google Waves broke
- 2010-08-04 Shutdown implied: "We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year..."[18]
- 2012-03-11 Gowalla shut down
- ??? number of user profiles lost
- ??? number of user check-in permalinks lost
- 2012-03-01 Google Friend Connect retired for all non-Blogger sites - was at www.google.com/friendconnect
- Export your community data - unknown how long it will be supported.
- limitation: "Export Community is limited to your site’s first 2000 members" (ibid)
- encouraged to transition to Google+: "create a Google+ page and place a Google+ badge on your site".
- 2008-05-12 Google Friend Connect launched.[19][20]
2011
- 2011-07-11 tr.im URL shortener failed.[21]
- ??? number of tr.im short links lost
- ??? number of links to tr.im URLs broken (across the web, Twitter, etc.)
- 2009-12-31 redirecting promised thru this date (and worked)
- 2009-08-10 went read only. short link creation disabled.[22][23]
2010
- 2010-12-10 Brightkite shut down - was at brightkite.com
- ??? number of user profiles lost
- ??? number of user check-in permalinks lost
- 2010-09-30 Vox shut down - was at vox.com.[24]
- 2010-09-15 Vox went read-only (ibid)
- ??? number of Vox blogs / posts lost.
- ??? number of migrated Pownce profiles lost.[25]
- ??? links to Vox posts broke.
- 2010-06 icanhaz.com shut down URI shortener
- Had previously stopped accepting new URIs but continued to serve old ones
- 55437 short URIs lost
- 2010-05-15 Etherpad.com offline taken offline by Google. (including their own blog post of their transition: http://etherpad.com/ep/blog/posts/transition-update). Etherpad went read-only a month beforehand (2010-04-14).
- ??? number of Etherpad pages lost.
- ??? links to Etherpad pages broke.
- Migration advised: to Google Wave. "Current EtherPad users will also be getting invites to try Google Wave in the near future..."[26], "EtherPad users got invites to use Wave..."[27]
- 2010-05-14 Twine taken offline at twine.com by Evri and redirected to evri.com.
- 2010-03-11 Evry acquired Twine.
- ??? number of Twine pages lost.
- ??? links to Twine pages broke.
- 2008-10-21 Twine launched publicly
2009
- 2009-12-31 Radio Userland service closing. [28]
- ?? number of blog posts lost
- ?? hosted comments and trackbacks lost
- 2009-12-29 Haloscan commenting service shut down.[29]
- ??? number of comments lost
- ??? number of links to comments broken
- ??? number of blogs with embedded Haloscan commenting broken
- 2009-04 Dodgeball.com shut down by Google
- ??? number of Dodgeball profiles gone.
- ??? number of Dodgeball venues gone (user created)
- ??? number of venue reviews gone (user created)
- 2009-02-28(?) went read-only at "end of February"[32]
- 2009-01-14 Shut down announced by Google[33]
- Subsequent site: Google Latitude.[34]
- 2009-02 Pownce.com went offline. Was previously scheduled to go offline 2008-12-15, but voluntary code patches/contributions from Tantek helped them to transition to public read-only access (to increase chance of archival of content) on that date for about 2 months.
- 2008-12-15 went read-only.
- ??? number of Pownce profiles gone.
- ??? links to Pownce posts broken.
- Migration Advised: import to Vox: "Six Apart is encouraging Pownce members to join its blog platform Vox".[35]
- 2009-01-30 Ma.gnolia.com shutdown.[36]. Ma.gnolia.com suffered catastrophic database corruption and lost all user data.
2008
- 2008-03 Consumating.com shut down by CNET.[37]
- ??? number of Consumating profiles/posts lost.
- ??? links to Consumating posts broken.
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
- 2001 Desktop.com shutdown[38] suddenly, without users being able to download their documents.
- ??? user profiles lost
- ??? user documents lost
- 2001 SixDegrees.com (wikipedia), one of the first social networking services
2000
- 2000-07-02 PlanetAll shutdown[39] by Amazon.
- 1.5 million user profiles lost including address books, calendars, buddy lists. (ibid)
- 2000-06-06 Amazon told users "PlanetAll.com will be going away"(ibid)
- 1998-08-04 Amazon bought PlanetAll [40]
- 1996-11 PlanetAll launched[41]
Unknown Year
- Wannadoo/orange personal sites
related
- Why - other problems with using and depending on 3rd party sites
- Google Graveyard (on pinterest.com)
![[23]](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2616/3805043835_8cfde77dcd_o.png){kind=link}
![[32]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3365/3217445842_42b9c04cc3_o.png){kind=link}