Whenever a company decides to retire a popular product or service, the transition process is rarely clean. Users complain for months, and sometimes the pressure manages to delay the termination date, but sooner or later the curtain falls. Product Graveyard is a portal that shows all those apps and platforms retired in recent years. Some entries include technical data, the reason for their 'death', and suggestions for effective replacements.
Notable digital deaths
Do you remember the retirement of Google Reader? According to the Mountain View giant, the service didn't have enough users, but complaints quickly piled up. Google gave less than four months to backup links, and on July 1, 2013, it pulled the plug. Another high-profile example was Vine. Twitter seemed to have a winning card with that service, however, the competition responded resolutely, content creators never received monetization options, and Twitter's own internal problems forced its closure. Obviously, Google Reader and Vine are just two references, but if we wanted to track most of these disappeared services, where do we start?
The best option is probably the Product Graveyard portal. Its database has more than a thousand entries divided into different categories, and sorted alphabetically. The most relevant cases have a special section ("obituary") that explains the cause of death, details such as its time online, and why they are remembered. Browsing the complete list is a true trip to the past. Several of those services visited NeoTeo (Bitcasa is one that comes to mind), full of hope and determination, only to bite the dust and become history.
Recommendations from the afterlife
Even so, Product Graveyard offers a small spark in the form of recommendations for alternative services. If we go back to the Google Reader example, we'll see links to the very popular Feedly and Feedwind, while for Vine it basically points in the direction of Instagram and Snapchat. Those responsible for Product Graveyard invite users to share more retired programs, confirming its profile as a "work in progress". After all, Adobe Flash hasn't died (it will do so in 2020, with possibilities of change), and it suggests as a replacement the obsolete Microsoft Silverlight.
Official site: Product Graveyard
