December 2008 Archives

The New York Times is dumping its internal Times File bookmarking feature: Times File allowed logged-in users to save a bookmark on the Times site for a given story. The feature will be removed from the site on 21-January-2009, but the ability to store a bookmark will disappeared from stories on 22-December-2008. The landing page currently doesn't explain the feature's upcoming trip to cold storage (the morgue is a newspaper's name for its filing system of old information) at this writing.

The Times said in its email announcement that social bookmarking sites can do the heavy lifting, and they can devote resources elsewhere.

The feature relied on software from LookSmart, which is offering a nifty transfer mechanism.

Publications shine their flashlight on It Died: I guess I (and a bunch of sites covering other kinds of shutdowns) struck a nerve. TechFlash wrote up yours truly's efforts, while BusinessWeek.com and All Things D looks at It Died and several other sites.

AT&T and Verizon bundled the Pro level of Yahoo's Flickr service as a freebie for its DSL and fiber subscribers: That deal is now over, and Flickr Pro accounts obtained in this manner will revert to free versions on 31-January-2009. Flickr Pro typically costs $24.95 per year. Flickr has always been relatively kind and generous with its behavior and storage, both before and after its acquisition by Yahoo. In this transition, they note that if your account reverts back to free after 31-January, you don't lose any data. While you can only view or download the most recent 200 images, they retain your data indefinitely. If you upgrade to Pro on your own, all your images return. Flickr also notes that if you had a Flickr Pro account and then activated AT&T or Verizon's free deal, however long you had remaining in your subscription will be applied. If used 6 months of a 12-month subscription, for instance, your Flickr Pro account will last through 31-July-2009 instead of 31-January. AT&T and Verizon both brand their services with Yahoo; it's possible there's a lot more changing in those deals, too.

This might seem odd from a blog that pokes a little dark humor at service shutdowns, but it's perfectly fair that these operations halt: I was rather stunned at the vitriol aimed at Rael Dornfest, the owner of Values of N and operator of I Want Sandy and Stikkit. Dornfest wasn't charging for these services, but they were quite good at their purposes. He opted to take a job with Twitter, sell them his intellectual property, and shutter the site. (It's unclear in which order this happened, and whether Twitter required the sites being shuttered as part of the deal, nor does it particularly matter.)

This is just one example, but it's easy for folks to get proprietorial about sites they frequent. And it's a shame when that conflicts with financial realities. Rael (who I've known for several years, but not been in touch with recently) clearly didn't shut down his sites because they were popular and become an employee of an another company out of disinterest or spite. Rather, the sites clearly couldn't have been operated in a fashion that he felt would provide him a living and a return--and pay for the salaries of the necessary staff to run a commercial operation.

You can run a free site with niche functionality on a shoestring, but once you start charging, you're suddenly in a different class with different expectations, even if you outsource as much as you can and only offer business-hour email-only technical support.

Many people asked Rael in the thread I link above, why he didn't keep running the site; why Twitter didn't allow it to keep running (a supposition by posters); or why Rael didn't turn over his code to an open-source project or similar effort.

Frankly, it's Rael's bat and ball. I understand the frustration of people who invested time to use and improve his system, and who think that their testing contribution means that they have a stake in the outcome.

Maybe the scales need to fall off folks' eyes, but if you're helping a commercially oriented, closed-source project, you shouldn't ever count on your efforts being rewarded in any fashion, no matter how lovely or horrible the individuals involved.

I guess I learned this lesson about 13 years ago after contributing a huge amount of time in a beta test for a small company. When that firm was acquired, the developers got rich; I didn't even get a license for the product!

We all have to learn this lesson again. Open-source projects ensure at least some form of continuity or the ability of continuity outside the financial interests of individuals and corporations. Proprietary projects and sites with closed source or equivalent strictures won't reward you in the long run except insofar as they meet your current needs and continue to exist for their own purposes.

I Want Sandy creator Rael Dornfest delays shuttering the site by 11 days: There was a large outpouring of anger, disbelief, acceptance, and the other stages of mourning, and Dornfest responded by adding a more extensive export tool for I Want Sandy reminder/scheduling data, and extending the service's operation to 19-December-2008.

I don't think that People Connection was originally meant to be a death pool: However, AOL has turned this blog into a relentless drumming of sites and projects they're canceling, including several I was unaware that AOL wrote. There must be a lot of layoffs and shifting around at the firm, given how many sites are shutting down. For instance, Circavie, a personal timeline feature, will erase itself from all four dimensions on 15-January-2009; there's no apparent way to extract timelines you've created. Ficlets, a kind of exquisite corpse for the digital world, will also be shredded on 15-January-2009. One of the People Connection bloggers is still trying to maintain a good attitude, though. Kelly Wilson posts in the middle of the death march of shutdowns, "What's on your plate this Thanksgiving? Share a recipe or your favorite dish!"

Condé Nast shuts down its social-networking site Flip.com: Fishbowl NY passes along email Flip sent to its users that informs them that to save the scrapbooking projects they've created (flipbooks, of course), they might want to print them. Perhaps with a letterpress, just for extra irony?

My wife groaned when I read her the "Flip Flops" headline, but pointed out, what else could I write? Flip Out?

The Wall Street Journal notes It Died is part of a growing community of blogs: We're all covering the death of various companies and services. Sad, really.

Pownce, a mash-up of instant messaging, file-transfer, and Twitter-like features lies down for the great recline on 15-December-2008: The service was intended to make it easier for groups of friends to exchange messages, invitations, pictures, and other communications. It was a great success in getting people to use it, but one expects not on the monetization side. As appears to be a trend, the founders Ariel Waldman and Mike Malone, are shuttering the service, going to work for another firm (in this case, Six Apart), and selling their Pownce technology to Six Apart as part of the deal. Six Apart is one of two major blog-software and hosting firms, developing Movable Type and hosting TypePad and Vox. (WordPress is the other major pure-play firm in that space.) This move mirrors the shut down Values of n, a company run by Rael Dornfest, who will turn off its two hosted offerings and take a job with Twitter, bringing along his intellectual property. (See "I Want Sandy and Stikkit Melt Away on 8-December-2008.")