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)

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

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