Not until now. It's hard to believe that a site which operated so successfully for so long should go down the gurgler so rapidly. Three months ago it was a happy place to be. Now, few people want to go there.
I once worked in a field which was an early casualty in the technology renaissance. The members of that particular web site are experiencing the same sense of inevitability that we had on that job as we waited for it to grind to a stop. It's sad to see it happen, and for no apparent reason.
At least it's gonna mean some more members for answerMug. A number have already joined and some others have indicated they're coming. I should think there'll be a lot more when it finally shuts down.
This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at January 13, 2017 9:29 PM MST
The glitchmeisters thought it was too much work. They removed the adult section and all us pervs got pissed. People started staying away in droves. I went back to look at the new one and it looked like it was being run by a young teen.
Experience Project did, but it took several years before they shut it down. Oh, sorry... put it on break. At least they had the decency to let us know with one month warning.
Ask did the same for us. I spent the month trolling back through the old questions and saving the specials. On line, they're lost for all time -- even the Way Back Machine doesn't have them.
I cleaned up my account before deleting it the day before, then using a new account I've created using one of my older usernames there. The one I identified myself with before my last real account. All my stuff has been deleted, however i got a zip file with it all.
Yeah, ones I've worked on because I have no skills.
I also come across a lot of personal blogs that have been dead for a few years. You can really tell when blogs started to get killed by social media. That really isn't so much as self destructed as just being abandoned.
Yeah.. Over the 20 or so years I've been doing this, I've seen MANY come and go.. It started with Askme.com. They didn't go broke. In fact, they were HIGHLY successful.. The NY Times even did an article on them. They just closed it down for reasons that astounded me then, and still do.. I've tried others over the years, like Answerway, Askmehelpdesk, Answerbag, Keen, and others that I've long since forgotten. I never made it to EP, or Blurtit..
I dunno HOW to make money on the internet, so I dunno what they did wrong.
excon
This post was edited by excon at January 13, 2017 9:29 PM MST
Well, sort of, but not because of the anything the members or even the moderators did wrong. The two sites I previously belonged to got sold out beneath its' users.
I belonged to a nice little Yahoo group called Shine and loved it there. That would have been about 10 years ago. We were very active there and all seemed wonderful. But they drastically began to change their format, much to the dismay of even our beloved moderator. The writing was on the wall that they were no longer going to be a chat site, but rather a place for advertisers to push their products. No one wanted to stay to talk about the best laundry detergent or home goods.
After that, we all landed in a well established place called Sodahead. It was huge with users by the thousands. But like Shine, they sold out to become a place to make money. Sodahead gave no warning and just like that, we couldn't get into our accounts. We had custom pages that were very elaborate and many of us chatted via email behind the scenes. They allowed us to retrieve nothing! Luckily, a lot of us stayed connected on Facebook since a few of us were good enough friends to be Facebook friends.
So it took a good year for me and a few of my closest friends to find this place. We heard of some of the others, but waited to find something we liked.
We were lucky we found Shine and enjoyed it thoroughly for the time we were on there. I was surprised that so many of us remained close after Shine closed. I think there are at least 40-50 members who stayed in touch and remained friends.
I enjoyed Sodahead until they started making changes without letting the members know anything. I interacted with many, but have only remained friends with those I truly cared about. I feel I was able to make the right choices in friendships. I don't miss anybody from there, because I still am in contact with those who mattered the most to me.
Likewise SA. I am truly happy that those friendships we forged all those years ago are still solid today. Shine was unique in the sense that we really did all stay in touch and many went on to have lasting friendships. There are a few from SH that I feel a bond with as well. All those that I wanted to stay in touch with, I have managed to do so.
A chatsite may die, but friendships don't have to.
it was a big shame what had happened to sodahead. it had the best layout, features, and navigation any site could have!!! it was beautiful in every way!! there will never be a site like that again..
This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at January 14, 2017 10:32 AM MST
You are so right about that Skunky. The layout was great and the ability to post gifs and images was super easy and a lot of fun. I miss having the type of profile pages we had too. But I accept it's gone and I actually do enjoy posting here more. I like the people here and never worry about some of the things that made Sodahead not so great...especially in the end.
I never heard of it either tbh. It's kinda cool this place brought together more than one defunct site. Some sites only seem to attract one set of alumni and that can make it hard for others to try and fit in. I never felt that way about this place. I think we are a pretty good collection of "mutts" here. LOL
Benedict Arnold 