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A Million Ways to Die on the Web

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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.

[ ]

Contents

  * 1 Disclaimer(s)
  * 2 Abandoned
  * 3 Pushed out by a competitor
  * 4 Bleeding money
  * 5 teh futurez!1!
  * 6 Acquired/Acqui-hired
  * 7 Yahoo-ed
  * 8 Personal Issues
  * 9 Censorship
  * 10 Continuous deletion
  * 11 Associated data
  * 12 See also

Disclaimer(s)

  * This list is very much not complete nor comprehensive.
  * The best way to keep your data safe is to make proactive backups.
  * The average timespan of warning-to-shutdown is 30 days.
    Sometimes, there's no warning whatsoever.
  * Fortunes can change, websites can suddenly become profitable.
    Just don't count on it.
  * Death can be sudden and happen overnight, or it can be drawn out
    over years.
  * Combo death: A website can go bankrupt and be acquired.

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 reassigned. One day, Company A decides managing it is too
expensive and not worth the effort, so they shut it down.

Pushed out by a competitor

Examples: Friendster, iWiW, YTMND

Situation: Company A runs a service, maybe with a limited market
(country, age group etc.) One day multinational Company B appears,
covering Company A's services, and soon more and more users think
"why not use that service if so many others do?", and a bit later
"why use any other service, if everyone uses that?" Unless company A
is lucky enough or finds a way to keep users, it can soon end its
business, left by the users.

Company A may end with symptoms of Abandoned, but also may try a
redesign to keep users (this can also cause data loss, see below).

Exercise: Think of some services you used happily back then, but now
even mentioning their name is embarassing. If these services are
still active (used by a group of "hardcore" users), it's not too late
(but definitely time) to archive them!

Bleeding money

Examples: FortuneCity, Inkblazers, Vstreamers, YTMND; Pomf.se,
kephost.com

Situation: Company A does "Facebook for cats". Company A grows a
small community of loyal [S:cat soldiers:S] 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.

Variation: Company B starts a service that becomes very popular in a
short time, showing an exponential growth. CEO of Company B (in fact,
just Joey in the garage) has no idea of a good business policy, or
never even wanted to make it a big business, so as soon as the HDD
gets full, he pulls the plug.

teh futurez!1!

Examples: Myspace, MobileMe, Bebo, Nokia Memories, GameMaker Sandbox,
Blip.tv, Hyves, Cheezburger

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, Giphy

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 reassigned 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?)

Personal Issues

Example: ZippCast, ArtNoodle, Referata

Situation: The owner dies, a loved one of the owner dies, the owner
or the owner's spouse had a baby, the owner is having a divorce or
the owner gives up.

Censorship

Examples: Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr

Situation: Company censors parts of the website for violating its
Terms of Service. The evidence for the removal may not be legit. For
example, YouTube used an artificial intelligence algorithm to remove
videos sympathetic to terrorist groups like ISIS or al-Qaeda. Videos
and entire channels documenting war crimes have been removed because
the algorithm falsely identified them to be sympathetic to terrorist
groups. [1][2]

Continuous deletion

Examples: 4chan, Imgur

Situation: Instead of raising a new datacenter one year another,
Company keeps deleting old stuff regularly.

Associated data

Situation: If a user deletes a video from a video hosting site, all
of the associated comments would be deleted. If a news article was
deleted, all of the associated comments would be deleted. If a user
account was deleted, all of the data would be deleted.

See also

  * Warning Signs


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