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The Fridge (YC S10) Is Going Dark
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- vladd 15y agoSite: http://www.frid.ge/ http://www.frid.ge/ TechCrunch on them in 2010: http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/23/the-fridge-facebook-sharing/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/23/the-fridge-facebook-sharing...
- zokiboy 15y agoIt is interesting how they provided the identical functionality as new Facebook Groups - they ripped-off Facebook's interface, then Facebook ripped-off their feature. It seems they were also inspired by Paul Adams' circles. I simply don't like that approach as anybody from the group can invite new people and anybody can add me to a group without my approval. Google circles will win.
- rdl 15y agoI'd never even heard of this company, but IMO they really should provide a much longer wind-down period. Similarly to Ron Conway's "if you have to shut down your company, that's fine, but do it properly -- pay your bills, pay your employees in full, do it in an orderly fashion -- if you do, I'll invest in you again, otherwise I won't." There should be a "responsible startup code of practice" for winding down operations where customers might depend on it. Especially in the summer, when people could be on vacation, providing 3-6mo of notice for a shutdown would be good. Exceptions if it is really arterial bleeding of cash, or some legal problems which expose you to ongoing civil or criminal liability, but if it's just the cost of a few EC2 instances, there is no excuse for not keeping it running until users have all comfortably migrated away. Otherwise, people will be less likely to trust cloud services in the future, which pisses in the pool for everyone.
- shii 15y agoAnd you know they haven't already done this because...?
- rdl 15y agoBecause they announced a 1mo (er, 4 day actually! I forgot it was July) period until the service shuts down and all data is deleted, as per the blog post which is the link in this article.
- e1ven 15y agoThe date on this post is July 15th, and the email says they're shutting down on the 19th. Giving customers 4 days notice is less than ideal.
- rednaught 15y agoAnd a weekend at that.
- huhtenberg 15y agoWell, may be there are simply no customers to begin with...
- BasDirks 15y agoBecause grandparent can read.
- benjiweber 15y agoQuite. Case in point - BackType announced they were terminating their API (after being acquired by Twitter) and gave less than 7 days notice.
- tluyben2 15y agoYeah that was just lame.
- tluyben2 15y ago
- rdl 15y agoI'm a little confused because none of their website, twitter, or blog says anything about this.
- dangrossman 15y agoIt does if you click the "Get Started Now" button.
- cubicle67 15y agonot really. reads more like they're working on some stuff, but back shortly. quote: Thanks for checking out Fridge! Fridge is going through some major changes and at this time not accepting new user registration. If you already have an account you can login. Check back later for more details!
- citricsquid 15y agothey're pivoting!
- rorschachh 15y agoperhaps fridge will go into stasis and come back in freak super-human form, complete with anime-style avatars with bulbous heads which bop along as you post. :P
- iphoneedbot 15y agoSo, does anyone know what happened? _I liked Frid.ge -- it'd be cool if they opensource everything
- jamesbkel 15y agoI never really used the service, so it's not a big deal for me, but the email subject could also have been a bit more descriptive than "Fridge Updates and Save your Data!". I saw it about 30min ago and glossed over it since I interpreted that as "Fridge updates w/ new features, one of which is called 'Save Your Data!'".
- revorad 15y agoI got the email too. This is the strangest product shutting down (non)-announcement I've seen from a startup. I think most startups could do with a crash course in how to communicate with their users. Given all that's been written about the importance of user feedback, most founders are very responsive now when they start - what with stalking visitors with Olark accounts, replying to emails and tweets within seconds, answering questions on social news sites. All is great when they want to benefit from the users' comments. But as soon as that's no longer the case, they treat users like a commodity and don't seem to care about telling them what's going on or what to expect next. It doesn't bode well for their future projects.
- localhost3000 15y agoi especially enjoy when shutdown notices are written to sound as though they are delivering really great and exciting news - "we've decided to shut down the website you've invested time in, but it's your lucky day because our team of ninjas is super stoked about a new big idea we're working on. It's so exciting! we can't wait to tell you about it! We can't tell you now. But there are more updates to come soon!! Promise!! :) :) :) !!!" which I always take as code for "our product didn't work. we're out of money. we're now sitting around depressed trying to think of a new website to build. you'll probably never hear from us again."
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- jgilliam 15y agoPath is also doing really poorly. Another site based on sharing information privately with a smaller group of people. Has anyone shown traction with a product that is explicitly anti-viral?
- spullara 15y agoSounds like email, IM and SMS. All fairly successful product categories. The problem is to make sure your private sharing product is better than them to succeed.
- dlevine 15y agoIt seems likely that they were talent acquired by one of the big tech companies. I have seen similar things in the past (etacts sent a cryptic message like this when salesforce bought them).
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Hisoka 15y agoeh.. you mean they were hired to go back to the corporate workforce... that's not an acquisition.
- fortybillion 15y agoFans of The Fridge might want to consider Minigroup (https://minigroup.com https://minigroup.com). It's less about the social and more about communication and collaboration, but we share their idea of private, defined groups. We'd love to have you :)
- austinchang 15y agoSorry everyone for the sudden notice. This has been wrecking us for some time and we went back and forth about how to handle this timeframe. Having a long graceful transition period for our users would have been great but for reasons that we could not control Fridge as it currently stands had to be shut down quickly. Unfortunately there are tough decisions (especially in startups) to make and tougher consequences to live with even if they come with a silver lining at the end. We remain dedicated to building great products and hopefully things will become more clear after the dust settles. Again, sorry for the sudden notice...
- rdl 15y agoThere are definitely legitimate reasons for doing this quickly, and having the policy in place to delete sensitive customer data (vs. turn it over to other companies) is definitely a good thing (and a lot better than a lot of companies in the past). Probably the best time to think about continuity for users is when the service has just been set up. I think it matters a lot more for things like Geocities, Vox, etc. than for a more realtime communications service.
- zipdog 15y agoIts a shame to see the company go, but this email is another reminder of the danger of trusting your data to a company. A four day wind-down period after which user data is deleted is very short. It especially odd as their Privacy Policy doesn't seem to specify that this is required. In fact, the Privacy Policy actually states that personal data may be preserved beyond the timeframe a user would expect.
- NTH 15y agoFYI looks like they weren't going out of business, they were getting acquire by Google: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Messaging-and-Collaboration/Google-Buys-Fridge-to-Make-Google-Circles-Cooler-889457/ http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Messaging-and-Collaboration/Google-...