Mashable: Pebble, a Twitter alternative that launched during the Musk era, is shutting down. “Pebble, which recently underwent its own name change from its previous moniker T2, has announced that it will be shutting down on November 1. The platform is the first of the many Twitter alternatives to launch after Musk to close down.”
TechCrunch: Google Podcasts to shut down in 2024 with listeners migrated to YouTube Music. “Google announced this morning it will be shutting down its Google Podcasts app later in 2024 as part of its broader transition to move its streaming listeners over to YouTube Music. The company earlier this year announced YouTube Music would begin supporting podcasts in the U.S., which will expand globally by year-end, and more recently said it was adding the ability for podcasters to upload their RSS feeds to YouTube also by year-end.”
The Verge: Who killed Google Reader?. “Google’s bad reputation for killing and abandoning products started with Reader and has only gotten worse over time. But the real tragedy of Reader was that it had all the signs of being something big, and Google just couldn’t see it. Desperate to play catch-up to Facebook and Twitter, the company shut down one of its most prescient projects; you can see in Reader shades of everything from Twitter to the newsletter boom to the rising social web.” Ten years later and I’m still mad.
Mashable: Gfycat is shutting down, so save your best reaction GIFs now. “Gfycat is being put down. The GIF-hosting platform has announced it will soon shut down, with its entire archive of funny GIFs and memes set to disappear in just under two months, on Sept. 1.”
WIRED: How to Leave a Platform When the Party’s Over. “Elon Musk’s ownership has sent some users in search of new alternatives, drab recreations of the original product. But a fresh URL will not solve the many problems of the financialized internet, nor can it fix the habits of fractured communication drilled into us by years of tweeting, subtweeting, dunking, lurking, and shitposting.”
TorrentFreak: Iconic Torrent Site RARBG Shuts Down, All Content Releases Stop. “RARBG, one of the world’s largest torrent sites, has said ‘farewell’ to millions of users. The site, which was a prominent and stable source of new movie and TV show releases, cited a variety of reasons behind its decision to cease operations. The surprise shutdown marks the end of an era.”
CNBC: Neeva, co-founded by a former Google exec, to shut down its consumer search product and focus on A.I. . “Neeva, the privacy-focused search company co-founded by former Google executive Sridhar Ramaswamy, announced Saturday that it is shutting down its consumer search engine and will focus on exploring use cases for artificial intelligence.”
The Guardian: The digital graveyard: BuzzFeed News joins sites hanging on in eerie afterlife. “Bosses promised to keep the BuzzFeed News site online as an archive, which means, like so many other failed online projects, whatever happened to be on the homepage that day will now be frozen in time forever. In this case: a feature on the history of Midge, Barbie’s pregnant sidekick, an explainer on what to do after ‘overdosing’ on weed and a review of Le Creuset’s new ‘shallot’ cookware shade, which called the color ‘the trend child of millennial pink and Alison Roman’s shallot pasta’.”
The Verge: Google will shut down Currents, the work-focused Google Plus replacement. “Google has announced that it’ll shut down Currents, which was introduced in 2019 as a replacement for Google Plus for G Suite.”
PetaPixel: To Save its Content, Archive Team is Attempting to Back Up All of DPReview. “Following yesterday’s news that DPReview is shutting down, photographers around the web began wondering what would happen to its huge library of articles, reviews, and camera test images, including the website’s excellent studio shot comparison tool. Archive Team aims to scrape more than 4 million articles and posts within the next three weeks.”
Ars Technica: Amazon layoffs will shut down camera review site DPReview.com after 25 years. “Amazon has plans to lay off at least 27,000 workers this year, including 9,000 that were announced in an internal email Monday morning. One unexpected casualty: Digital Photography Review, also known as DPReview, is losing its entire editorial staff, and the site will stop publishing on April 10.”
Bleeping Computer: File-sharing site Zippyshare shutting down after 17 years. “File-sharing site Zippyshare has announced they are shutting down the site by the end of March 2023 after announcing they can no longer afford to keep the service running.”
MixMag: Has DatPiff Shutdown? Rumours Circulate Around Popular Hip Hop Mixtape Platform. “Many fans of the platform have been mourning the loss of DatPiff’s enormous archive, amid speculations that the site has shutdown. Prominently used in 2010s, the site allowed artists such as Meek Mill and Lil Wayne to make their name and release music — with much of its archived material now inaccessible to fans.”
ProPublica: After a Decade of Tracking Politicians’ Deleted Tweets, Politwoops Is No More. “Whether officials were deleting an embarrassing post or just correcting a typo, Politwoops tracked them all. But service changes made after Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter have rendered it impossible for us to continue tracking these tweets.”
Engadget: Amazon is shutting down the AmazonSmile charity program in February. “Whenever people use the AmazonSmile website to make a purchase, the company donates 0.5 percent of what they paid to the charity of their choice at no additional cost to them. As a parting donation to participating organizations, Amazon will give them the equivalent of three months what they earned in 2022 through the program.”
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