43things
Oh, dear. One of the sites I've been on for quite a long time - seven years - has decided it's time to stop existing. The site in question is 43things, which was about goal-setting in a community, and I ... feel somewhat adrift now that I can no longer add things there. I've gone through phases of using it heavily and not using it very much at all over the past years, like with everything else, but it was always there noting some of my older goals for me, reminding me of things I've wanted to do for a long time and for not such a long time.
And today when I went in to add an entry to a goal I've been working on, I found out that they made the site read-only as of August 15. I'm exporting my content so I don't lose it all, but ... now it will sit on my hard drive, static and private, like all the rest of my to-do lists. And the content I downloaded has nothing in it of all the comments I've left on other people's goals, or the comments people have left on mine, or of the social connections I've made over the past seven years. I can't think of any way to replace the community aspect of the site.
I think it's rather irresponsible of the designers to just yank the community out from underneath people without giving them time to preserve their social connections. Okay, maybe they did give people time, and I missed it, but there's no announcement in my e-mail inbox about the site going read-only; and I got a social interaction notification as recently as August 18 ... after the site is supposed to have gone read-only. So it's a bit of a shock to see that all the connections I've made are gone, just like that.
I mean, such is life, and I'll have to come to terms with it. But I wonder about the type of person who could, in an era when nearly all things Internet come with an emphasis on social connections, let a community build itself and then basically erase it without giving it any warning. I always wonder about the type of person who feels free to casually destroy social connections, really; and I probably look at such an act with extra scrutiny because I have been capable of doing that myself, but I have not since very early childhood been the type to do it without knowing full well that such an act can have lasting consequences.
And today when I went in to add an entry to a goal I've been working on, I found out that they made the site read-only as of August 15. I'm exporting my content so I don't lose it all, but ... now it will sit on my hard drive, static and private, like all the rest of my to-do lists. And the content I downloaded has nothing in it of all the comments I've left on other people's goals, or the comments people have left on mine, or of the social connections I've made over the past seven years. I can't think of any way to replace the community aspect of the site.
I think it's rather irresponsible of the designers to just yank the community out from underneath people without giving them time to preserve their social connections. Okay, maybe they did give people time, and I missed it, but there's no announcement in my e-mail inbox about the site going read-only; and I got a social interaction notification as recently as August 18 ... after the site is supposed to have gone read-only. So it's a bit of a shock to see that all the connections I've made are gone, just like that.
I mean, such is life, and I'll have to come to terms with it. But I wonder about the type of person who could, in an era when nearly all things Internet come with an emphasis on social connections, let a community build itself and then basically erase it without giving it any warning. I always wonder about the type of person who feels free to casually destroy social connections, really; and I probably look at such an act with extra scrutiny because I have been capable of doing that myself, but I have not since very early childhood been the type to do it without knowing full well that such an act can have lasting consequences.