You guys know what I still miss? Springpad. And, to some extent, Google Reader. What old, defunct web services do you miss?
I know there are other services that can duplicate Springpad’s former glory, but none of them really stuck with me as much as the original did. Google Reader’s death is still a sore spot, even though Feedly does just fine for me. ReQall is another simple, well-featured to-do app that was great before it decided to “pivot,” which inevitably resulted in its death. And hey, remember Astrid? (At least there’s a good clone of Astrid that’s still amazing.)
All of this got me thinking about web services we used to use all the time that have gone by the wayside — and the ones that we would still use if they were around today. For me? I would absolutely still use Springpad if it were still a thing. What about you?
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15 responses to “What Defunct Web Services Do You Miss?”
Google Reader without a doubt. I still can’t get feedly to work as smoothly.
Lifehacker for decent editorial and, you know, life hacks.
Facebook’s great grandaddy, Geocities.
I wouldn’t use them now as they were terrible services but they make me feel nostalgic, so that is missing them in a sense.
– Geocities. Back when you chose the neighborhood for your page. /silicon_valley/haven and would pile gif’s all over your site making a hideous mess
– Yahoo Chat
– ICQ. I can still hear the message notification sound
Uh oh!
Lol. I have that ICQ sound as my SMS notification.
ICQ is still a thing! I was amazed to discover this not long ago.
I miss Compuserve and the lack of trolls and outrage clowns on there.
Microsoft V-Chat!
We Are Hunted was a great music Web service before Twitter brought them out and killed it.
FriendFeed. I had a particular group of reading/book lovers that I ”met’ there that was truly lovely…the interface was easy but also useful for our kind of discussion (most of us were book bloggers whose RSS feeds would post automatically then generate a threaded discussion), the barrier to entry zero and there were no ads. We moved to FB but it’s not the same…ads are everywhere, you have to let people know your real name (assuming you have a FB account under that name) and are tracked and hassled by FB just for the privilege of having a chat with some mates
Google Reader!
Geocities / Angelfire
Gamespy?
mBox (it was that voicemail service that you could listen to from your web browser! it was the 90’s?)
the original hamster dance site
Grooveshark
I was going to say that I miss Greymatter (I started my first “business” installing it!) but according to Wikipedia it’s still around… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greymatter_(software)
theoldreader.com works basiclaly exactly the same as google reader did for me…