Amplify/Clipmarks Shutting Down Service Immediately

I received an email today from Amplify, a Gimme Bar like service that has been around a few years (and a former client of mine), saying that the service was shutting down immediately, which is a bit ungracious. Usually a service will give users a month or two to export or transition. I tried to open my old account but access seems to be closed.

There is the hope that the closed-beta alternative Clipboard might allow transition, but it sounds iffy:

via Clipboard Blog

I am a Clipmarks / Amplify user and I want my clips preserved. What do I do?

We can’t guarantee that all of your clips will be preserved. But if you want all of your clips preserved, you’ll want to look for an email from the Amplify and Clipmarks teams, which contains an invitation to Clipboard. From the registration page, you will be able to request that your clips be migrated from Amplify or Clipmarks into Clipboard.

The Clipboard team will assess the demand for having old clips preserved. If it is sufficiently high and technically feasible, they will build a custom tool to automate the clip migration process. In the event that they have decided that there is not sufficient demand or other complicating issues, they will notify users of that outcome as well.

Ouch.

I found Amplify interesting, but annoying. For example, the tool enforced a 1000 character limit on text clips, which was arbitrary and painful.

Remember Empire Avenue?

Back in the first half of the year I wrote some fairly disparaging comments about Empire Avenue, which is a social network modeled like a stock market so that all users’ reputaiton or popularity is indicated by a stock price. 

I thought this was sort of dumb:

Jeremiah Owyang does a serious writeup, implicitly advocating that brands should get involved, but I think he’s way too premature with this plaything. David Armano takes a more playful and questioning viewpoint, and suggests it’s ‘more fun in many regards than Facebook’.

But I don’t think it is. It will be a useful proxy for popularity, which is only loosely linked with influence. And meanwhile, eye candy like Empire Avenue will lead people to once again reinforce the wrongheaded blurring of popularity and influence.

Here’s what I wrote at Quora when asked if Empire Avenue is a fad:

Like most systems based on gaming, it will turn out to be a fad, unless there are complex strategic elements of the game (like chess, go, bridge, or WoW). A stock market based on some derivative of popularity is what we hoped to leave behind when we graduated high school. At least most of us.

Just for laughs — and partly because the trolls really came after me for that post and a follow-on — I took a look at Empire Ave’s stats:

I compared Empire Avenue to Klout, and it is certainly not on a par with that service, which is another way to look at people’s online reputation, at least as related to Twitter and other services. More importantly, EA page views have fallen by over 40% in the past six months. So, no matter what all the fans said back in the spring, Empire Avenue is not catching on as a new and hip social experience. It’s just another hunk of junk that didn’t catch on, and probably headed for the trash heap in short order.

Official Google Blog: A fall spring-clean

Google’s Sidewiki goes into the deadpool, along with a list of other experiments:

Alan Eustace via Official Google Blog

Sidewiki: Over the past few years, we’ve seen extraordinary innovation in terms of making the web collaborative. So we’ve decided to discontinue Sidewiki and focus instead on our broader social initiatives. Sidewiki authors will be given more details about this closure in the weeks ahead, and they’ll have a number of months to download their content.

Got email today saying that it’s shutting down 5 December. I don’t remember using it, but I looked and I had one bookmark there.

Dabble DB Joins The Deadpool

Smallthought was acquired by Twitter in June 2010, and is pulling the plug on Dabble DB.

(via email)

March 17, 2011

Smallthought Systems Inc.
300-422 Richards Street
Vancouver, BC  V6B 2Z4
Canada

Dear Customer:

You are receiving this letter because you have been a user of
Dabble DB.

We are writing to notify you that we will be shutting down the
Dabble DB service on May 18, 2011. After exploring other options
including finding another home for Dabble DB or continuing to
try to support it ourselves, we’ve come to this difficult
decision. We deeply regret any inconvenience this may cause you.

Your data will remain available for export by you through
May 18, 2011.  After May 18, your data will become unavailable,
so it is important to complete your data export no later than
May 18.  After May 18, we will begin the process of purging all
user data stored on our hardware.  To assist you with your data
export, we have prepared data export instructions, which you
can find at http://dabbledb.com/help/index/backup.

If you are a month-to-month Dabble DB service customer, we will
have stopped billing your credit card as of the date of this
letter, March 17, 2011.  If you are an annual or semi-annual
pre-paid customer, we will credit the card we have on file for
you with a prorated refund from March 17, 2011 to the end of
your pre-paid billing term. If you are a cheque-paying customer,
we will be issuing you a pro-rated refund by cheque and mailing
it out to the invoicing address we have on file.

If you have any questions related to exporting your data or the
closure of your account, please email support@dabbledb.com and
we will do our best to assist.

Thank you for having been a Dabble DB customer.



                  Sincerely,
                  /s/
           The Dabble DB Team