5 ms·

Ask HN: What sites did you invest significant time in only to have it shut down?

7 points by everdev 9y ago

Either: A) creating the site yourself or B) creating user generated content or building a reputation When it closed, what was it's impact on you?

ryanchants 9y ago
Not really a site, but plenty of MUDs back in the day. Can't find an MMORPG that quite scratches the same itch.
muzani 9y ago
I build a lot of sites and apps for clients. A good number of them tried to cash in on the e-commerce craze, then realized that logistics and competing with Amazon is difficult. So practically all of them have shut down by now. I've become hardened to it by now. It's sort of like having a goldfish; they all die eventually.
bigiain 9y ago
Twitter. (Still waiting/hoping for that trashfire to shut down...)
krasicki 9y ago
Geocities went Yahoo rancid before shutting down and was abandoned after being fenced with a ten foot perimeter.
csa 9y ago
BetThePot in the aughts. It was sort of an early thinking man's poker site -- it was quite a bit more civil and exploratory than 2p2 at the time. Eventually the quality of analysis at 2p2 surpassed BtP, and then the training sites came along. This was sort of the heyday of online poker, so the community was a lot of fun. I really miss it.
stevekemp 9y ago
https://debian-administration.org/ https://debian-administration.org/ was a site I setup to document my learning, and I wrote a lot of code for it over the years, as well as a lot of articles. Mostly the experience was positive, but I'm still a little grumpy at the people who would copy posts I'd written into linkedin groups, and similar places, pretending they'd written them. I issued takedown notices against some of the biggest offenders, but it soured my experience of writing documentation, tutorials and guides.
DrScump 9y ago
Usenet newsgroups, if that counts as a "site".
sergiotapia 9y ago
tech.pro - Hands down the easiest site to write programming articles in. Leagues better than Medium is today. It shut down for some reason. https://web.archive.org/web/20130805065735/http://tech.pro/ https://web.archive.org/web/20130805065735/http://tech.pro/
zapperdapper 9y ago
I spent about 8 years running my own Thailand-related web site. I had a lot of photos, a lot of content, interviews, articles, a blog. I had people write me saying the site had changed their lives, or they moved to Thailand because of my site, or my site helped them when they decided to relocate. It just didn't seem to be going anywhere in terms of traffic so I canned it. When I closed it down I had mixed feelings - it was a labour of love, but closing it freed up time to work on other things.
dagw 9y ago
Does usenet count? (yes I know usenet hasn't really 'shut down', but it's just a pale shadow of its former self)
ecesena 9y ago
I co-built/run Theneeds [1] for about 5y. We shut it down during the acquisition. In our case, we weren't sad or anything because the website was "just a frontend" to the recommendation engine, that was in fact the IP that we sold. As a counter strategy to avoid shut down, I'm building most of my projects on free hosting/api. Of course very limited functionality. Examples: Has Gluten [2], personal dashboard for cryptos [3]. Despite this, I had a project [4] shutting down due to Runkeeper suddenly turning off their API access. I still run on avg 1mi/day, and I had to go back to manual/spreadsheet counting in 2018. [1] http://theneeds.com http://theneeds.com [2] http://hasgluten.com http://hasgluten.com [3] http://priceeth.github.io http://priceeth.github.io [4] https://github.com/runwithmark/runwithmark.github.io https://github.com/runwithmark/runwithmark.github.io

7 points by everdev 9y ago

Either: A) creating the site yourself or B) creating user generated content or building a reputation When it closed, what was it's impact on you?

ryanchants 9y ago

Not really a site, but plenty of MUDs back in the day. Can't find an MMORPG that quite scratches the same itch.

muzani 9y ago

I build a lot of sites and apps for clients. A good number of them tried to cash in on the e-commerce craze, then realized that logistics and competing with Amazon is difficult. So practically all of them have shut down by now. I've become hardened to it by now. It's sort of like having a goldfish; they all die eventually.

bigiain 9y ago

Twitter. (Still waiting/hoping for that trashfire to shut down...)

krasicki 9y ago

Geocities went Yahoo rancid before shutting down and was abandoned after being fenced with a ten foot perimeter.

csa 9y ago

BetThePot in the aughts. It was sort of an early thinking man's poker site -- it was quite a bit more civil and exploratory than 2p2 at the time. Eventually the quality of analysis at 2p2 surpassed BtP, and then the training sites came along. This was sort of the heyday of online poker, so the community was a lot of fun. I really miss it.

stevekemp 9y ago

https://debian-administration.org/ https://debian-administration.org/ was a site I setup to document my learning, and I wrote a lot of code for it over the years, as well as a lot of articles. Mostly the experience was positive, but I'm still a little grumpy at the people who would copy posts I'd written into linkedin groups, and similar places, pretending they'd written them. I issued takedown notices against some of the biggest offenders, but it soured my experience of writing documentation, tutorials and guides.

DrScump 9y ago

Usenet newsgroups, if that counts as a "site".

sergiotapia 9y ago

tech.pro - Hands down the easiest site to write programming articles in. Leagues better than Medium is today. It shut down for some reason. https://web.archive.org/web/20130805065735/http://tech.pro/ https://web.archive.org/web/20130805065735/http://tech.pro/

zapperdapper 9y ago

I spent about 8 years running my own Thailand-related web site. I had a lot of photos, a lot of content, interviews, articles, a blog. I had people write me saying the site had changed their lives, or they moved to Thailand because of my site, or my site helped them when they decided to relocate. It just didn't seem to be going anywhere in terms of traffic so I canned it. When I closed it down I had mixed feelings - it was a labour of love, but closing it freed up time to work on other things.

dagw 9y ago

Does usenet count? (yes I know usenet hasn't really 'shut down', but it's just a pale shadow of its former self)

ecesena 9y ago

I co-built/run Theneeds [1] for about 5y. We shut it down during the acquisition. In our case, we weren't sad or anything because the website was "just a frontend" to the recommendation engine, that was in fact the IP that we sold. As a counter strategy to avoid shut down, I'm building most of my projects on free hosting/api. Of course very limited functionality. Examples: Has Gluten [2], personal dashboard for cryptos [3]. Despite this, I had a project [4] shutting down due to Runkeeper suddenly turning off their API access. I still run on avg 1mi/day, and I had to go back to manual/spreadsheet counting in 2018. [1] http://theneeds.com http://theneeds.com [2] http://hasgluten.com http://hasgluten.com [3] http://priceeth.github.io http://priceeth.github.io [4] https://github.com/runwithmark/runwithmark.github.io https://github.com/runwithmark/runwithmark.github.io