Roughly speaking, services rise and fall in a span of about 10~20 years.
- This page was started to be written in September 2018
Hatena Diary (16 years)
- January 2003 service launch
- Hatena Blog is released in November 2011
- August 2018, announcement of service termination in spring 2019.
Cybozu Live (10 years)
- Launched by invitation only in November 2009
- October 2010, free registration system.
- October 2017, announcement of service termination on April 15, 2019.
Yahoo Group (10 years)
- February 9, 2004: Start of service
- July 7, 2009: Renewal of service centered on electronic bulletin board
- December 18, 2013: End of service announcement
- May 28, 2014: End of service
Yahoo Messenger (20 years)
- Released in May 1998 (was called Yahoo! Pager)
- 2003 Last release of Linux and Solaris versions
- 2012 Last release for Windows, Mac
- By 2016, Windows, Mac, Linux, and Solaris clients will no longer be supported, only Android, iOS, and Web.
- Ending July 2018
ICQ (20 years)
- Released in 1996
- Acquired by AOL in 1998
- 120 million in additional payments over three years based on performance levels
- Number of users exceeds 100 million in 2001
- January 2010, added Facebook integration and other features
- In April 2010, AOL sold ICQ to Digital Sky Technologies for $187.5 million
- January 2016, Facebook integration and other features will be removed.
- May 2016, source code is published on Github.
- https://gigazine.net/news/20240527-farewell-to-icq/
Geocities (US 15 years, Japan 22 years) Geocities - Wikipedia.
- November 1994 Established U.S. subsidiary
- June 1997 GeoCities K.K., a Japanese subsidiary, is established as a joint venture with SoftBank, and the Japanese version of GeoCities service is launched in September of the same year.
- October 26, 2009 GeoCities service ends for the U.S. version
- October 1, 2018 End of service announcement
- March 31, 2019 Service to be terminated
Evernote (15+ years)
- Service launch in June 2008
- Fund Raise of $20 Million from Nikkei in November 2014
- Key members retired in August 2018.
- Evernote lost its CTO, CFO, CPO and HR head in the last month as it eyes another fundraise | TechCrunch
- The service itself continues.
- 2023-11-19 Evernote drastically limits free plans, caps notes from 100,000 to 50 - ITmedia NEWS
- 2024-04-26 “Evernote” Japan Inc. dissolves, publishes notice of dissolution addendum - ITmedia NEWS []
X/Twitter (17+ years)
- Service launch in July 2006
- Gained attention at SXSWi in March 2007, increasing from 20,000 to 60,000 tweets per day
- Many users in Japan started using the system in April-May 2007.
- Acquisition by Elon Musk in October 2022
- In January 2023, Twitter ended third-party access to its API and all third-party Twitter clients were shut down.
- Interpretation that third-party Twitter clients interfere with showing ads
- Name change to X in July 2023
- October 2023, introduction of paid plans
Yahoo announces termination of service in Europe, possibly due to GDPR with hefty fines - SAKISIRU
- Examples of speculative reasons for difficulty in continuing services
Related Notes
- https://www.itmedia.co.jp/enterprise/articles/0505/12/news007.html
- 2005, a case of major surgery to replace the database area, successfully prolonging life.
Scrapbox
- 2016 Release
- 250,000 as of June 2022
- 290,000 as of June 2023.
- Be used as CMS for FAQ system “Helpfeel
- 2024-05-21 Renamed “Helpfeel Cosense” src
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