A Million Ways to Die on the Web
This is a list of common ways websites shut down and user content gets permanently deleted. If you know of a website exhibiting any of these symptoms, please tell us on IRC.
MOTHERFUCKER ! ! !
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Abandoned
Examples: GeoCities, Swipnet, Verizon Personal Web Space, My Opera, Quizilla
Situation: Company A creates a service or buys out Company B and integrates them with their website. Years and years go by, with updates to the service slowing to a complete stop as employees quit or are re-assigned. One day, Company A decides managing it is too expensive and not worth the effort, so they shut it down.
Bleeding money
Examples: FortuneCity, Inkblazers, Vstreamers
Situation: Company A does "Facebook for cats". Company A grows a small community of loyal cat soldiers users, but doesn't gain enough traction to keep things profitable. Company A can't find anyone who's interested in acquiring them, so they shut down.
teh futurez!1!
Examples: Myspace, MobileMe, Bebo, Nokia Memories, GameMaker Sandbox, Blip.tv, Hyves
Situation: Either Company A releases the new Singing and Dancing Version 2.0 website, which is supposed to succeed nasty old version 1.0, or Company A "pivots" and becomes The All New Shiny Company A. In either case, Company A removes their old website and deletes all of the user data.
Acquired/Acqui-hired
Examples: GeoCities, Posterous, Brace.io, Roon, Viddy, Qwiki, Yahoo! Voices, Blip.tv
Situation: Company A buys Company B, employees and all. Together, they will continue their incredible journey to make the world a better place. A few months/years/seconds later, Company B is dead and its employees are either laid off or re-assigned to Company A projects.
Yahoo-ed
Situation: Same as Acquired/Acqui-hired, but the purchasing company is known for suddenly and randomly shutting down websites. Named after Yahoo!, which has a track record of doing this.
The prognosis here is critical. You should make local backups of all of your data ASAP (better yet, why wait until it's too late?)
