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| |_| \_\ |___| |_| |
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|__________________________|
/____________________________\
/______________________________\
:: Digital Graveyard ::
*** Here are the messengers, social networks, browsers and websites the Internet forgot *** When was the last time someone said uh-oh to you on ICQ? ***
Internet runs fast. One day they were on our desktops, the next their servers went dark, their domains went bad, their icons disappeared from our trays. Some died of mismanagement, some of takeover, some of irrelevance. Some are technically still alive, but their spirits are long gone. This page is a memorial to all of them.
We bury our heroes here. Insert 56k modem for them.
! This page is under construction !
~Messengers & Chat~
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1996-|
| 2024|
|_____|
|
icq 📖 1996 – 2024 “uh oh.” It was the text notification of a generation before voice texts existed. Its 6-digit numbers were the first online identities we ever cared about. Now after 28 years it has finally closed. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1999-|
| 2014|
|_____|
|
MSN Messenger/Windows Live Messenger 📖 1999 – 2014 “Appearing offline” was a personality. The shock shook your screen and your heart. Your situation was a song song. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1998-|
| 2018|
|_____|
|
Yahoo! messenger 📖 1998 – 2018 Discussion! Discussion! The fastest possible way to say I miss you. Its emoticons were unmatched. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1997-|
| 2017|
|_____|
|
AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) 📖 1997 – 2017 Yellow man running. The distant messages were poetry. Slamming the door – “snoozyboi89 has signed.” Gut punch. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2005-|
| 2019|
|_____|
|
BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) 📖 2005 – 2019 PIN exchanges were corporate intimacy. Were concerned about the R/D tick situation. It died protecting its keyboard. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2005-|
| 2022|
|_____|
|
Google Talk/Hangouts (Classic) 📖 2005 – 2022 Remember when Google had One Messenger? Then six? Then zero? Relax in the merge. |
~social network~
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2003-|
| 2011|
|_____|
|
myspace (the real one) 📖 2003 – 2011(ish) In your top 8 there was a public love letter and a public knife fight. Profile songs start playing automatically at 3 am. Tom is still your friend. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2002-|
| 2015|
|_____|
|
friendster 📖 2002 – 2015 The first social network used by most Americans. Then it became a gaming site. Then it disappeared. Timeline of a Forgotten Pioneer. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2004-|
| 2014|
|_____|
|
orkut 📖 2004 – 2014 Google’s first social network effort. Oddly huge in Brazil and India. 300 million users could not save it. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2011-|
| 2019|
|_____|
|
Google+ 📖 2011 – 2019 They added you to comment on YouTube. The Circle was a great idea trapped in a building that no one wanted to enter. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2010-|
| 2018|
|_____|
|
path 📖 2010 – 2018 “A smaller, more personal social network.” As Dunbar said, there is a limit of 150 friends. No one wanted intimacy; Everyone wanted access. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2013-|
| 2017|
|_____|
|
Bell 📖 2013 – 2017 Six seconds. Comedic genius cremated by Twitter monetization illusion. TikTok has inherited everything except the obstacles. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2013-|
| 2017|
|_____|
|
yik yak 📖 2013 – 2017 (back for a while, then gone) Anonymous campus gossip. Died by restraint, grew by reputation. A concise, chaotic, location-based ghost town. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2009-|
| 2017|
|_____|
|
Bebo 📖 2005 – 2013 The MySpace of UK and Ireland. AOL bought it for $850M, sold it three years later for $10M. Friend Love was a limited resource. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2003-|
| 2018|
|_____|
|
high 5 📖 2003 – 2018 Very big in Latin America and Turkey. Profile customization heaven. Eventually turned to gaming, then quit. |
~ Website and Web Host ~
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1994-|
| 2009|
|_____|
|
Geocities 📖 1994 – 2009 Original Home Page Utopia. Neighborhoods, animated GIFs, MIDI files, |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1995-|
| 2024|
|_____|
|
angelfire/tripod 📖 1995 – Technically still on life support Still alive but their hearts stopped beating in 2003. The cousin of land-cities, smaller, shabby. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2004-|
| 2017|
|_____|
|
Digg (original) 📖 2004 – 2010 (the new design was the real death knell) Electricity users had a religion. The V4 redesign was schismous. Reddit ate the whole pie. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2003-|
| 2017|
|_____|
|
Tasty / del.icio.us 📖 2003 – 2017 Social Bookmarking When bookmarking was social. Tags were the future. They were not there then. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2007-|
| 2015|
|_____|
|
friend Feed 📖 2007 – 2015 The geek’s social aggregator. Facebook bought it, hired the team, pretended it didn’t exist. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2009-|
| 2010|
|_____|
|
google wave 📖 2009 – 2010 “What if email and chat create a baby?” He sent it. No one understood this. Died in 14 months. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2005-|
| 2013|
|_____|
|
Google Reader 📖 2005 – 2013 RSS was an open social network. Google killed it for no particular reason and the open web has been mourning ever since. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2005-|
| 2017|
|_____|
|
YouTube comments before Google+ 📖 2005 – 2013 They were anarchists but they were ours. The Google+ integration happened when YouTube comments officially ended as culture. |
~Search Engines and Browsers~
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1994-|
| 2008|
|_____|
|
netscape navigator 📖 1994 – 2008 The browser that opened the web. Lost the battle with Internet Explorer, then Mozilla rose from its ashes. The spiritual ancestor of Firefox forever. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1995-|
| 2022|
|_____|
|
Internet Explorer 📖 1995 – 2022 punching bag. Tables were presented creatively. Crashes often. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1995-|
| 2013|
|_____|
|
altavista 📖 1995 – 2013 Before Google, it was the search engine. Yahoo bought it, neglected it, eventually shut it down. The babelfish died with it. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1996-|
| 2010|
|_____|
|
ask jeeves 📖 1996 – 2010 A butler answers your questions. Then they fired Butler and made it just “Ask.com.” It’s still around but neither you nor I come. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1995-|
| 2010|
|_____|
|
Lycos / Excite / Hotbot 📖 1995 – 2010 An entire ecosystem of forgotten quest contests. Dogpile missed them. No one else did. |
~Media and Music~
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1999-|
| 2002|
|_____|
|
Napster (original) 📖 1999 – 2002 It broke everything. Riya won the case but lost the war. It took 24 years for a paid streaming model to completely replace the dream. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2000-|
| 2010|
|_____|
|
Kazaa/Limewire/BearShare 📖 Early 2000s – 2010ish Downloaded a virus and an album that same afternoon. Accidentally installed three browser toolbars. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1997-|
| 2013|
|_____|
|
Winamp (it really whips the llamas…) 📖 1997 – 2013 (and some revivals) Skinnable, customizable, the player that taught us about MP3 ID3 tags. AOL bought it. AOL killed it. AOL. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1995-|
| 2022|
|_____|
|
real Player 📖 1995 – technically still alive, spiritually 2005 .rm files. Buffering. Their entire business model was forcing us to click “No” on bundled software 47 times per install. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2007-|
| 2015|
|_____|
|
grooveshark 📖 2007 – 2015 Free music streaming without any explicit license. Legally questionable. Spiritually beloved. Ultimately sued out of existence. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2010-|
| 2015|
|_____|
|
RDO 📖 2010 – 2015 Spotify’s beautiful European cousin. Better UI, smaller catalog, no chance. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1996-|
| 2020|
|_____|
|
Adobe Flash 📖 1996 – 2020 Flash Games, Flash Banner, Flash About Page. The entire weird and wonderful internet of the 2000s ran on it. Steve Jobs is still smiling. |
~Devices and Gadgets~
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1996-|
| 2009|
|_____|
|
Tamagotchi (original era) 📖 1996 – ~2009 The first digital pet that taught us about death. The school banned him. You fed it during math, came home from school, and found it dead. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1979-|
| 2010|
|_____|
|
Sony Walkman/Discman 📖 1979 – 2010 The cassette Walkman invented “personal music”. Discman taught us about anti-skip protection. The iPod evicted them both. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1992-|
| 2013|
|_____|
|
Minidisc 📖 1992 – 2013 Sony’s beautiful, ill-fated cassette successor. Better than a CD, smaller than a CD, ignored by the world. A true cult hardware. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2006-|
| 2012|
|_____|
|
Microsoft Zune 📖 2006 – 2012 The brown one. Squirting songs for friends. The saddest social music tool ever sent. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1996-|
| 2007|
|_____|
|
Palm Pilot / PalmOS 📖 1996 – 2007 graffiti writing. PIM in your pocket. Before phones, there was “a computer in your hand.” Earned, mismanaged, lost. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2002-|
| 2016|
|_____|
|
BlackBerry (as a phone empire) 📖 2002 – 2016 Keyboard purist. Email on Metro. The Pope had one. Obama had one. He swore that touchscreens were a fad. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2010-|
| 2017|
|_____|
|
Windows Phone 📖 2010 – 2017 Live Tiles was really cool. The Nokia hardware was beautiful. No one made apps for this. RIP the third platform. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2012-|
| 2018|
|_____|
|
pebbles 📖 2012 – 2018 The Kickstarter that started Kickstarter. E-paper smartwatch. Fitbit ate it. The apple watch buried him. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1999-|
| 2007|
|_____|
|
symbian os 📖 1998 – 2014 Nokia ran the world on this. Then the iPhone came out. Nokia continued shipping Symbian phones for the next 6 years without refusal. Eventually everyone paid attention. |
~Sports & Community~
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1999-|
| 2007|
|_____|
|
Neopets (Golden Age) 📖 1999 – ~2007 (still alive, not quite the same) We taught ourselves HTML on the Neopets profile. An entire generation of programmers was drawn into pet customization. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2000-|
| 2011|
|_____|
|
Habbo Hotel (peak era) 📖 2000 – 2011 (Still alive, like never before) Virtual hotel rooms. virtual currency. Virtual relationships. Literally hours wasted. Unforgettable. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2005-|
| 2017|
|_____|
|
Club Penguin 📖 2005 – 2017 Disney bought it, eventually scrapping it for an app version. Those millions of kids who were hanging out there are now adults reminiscing on Twitter. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2001-|
| 2018|
|_____|
|
runescape classic 📖 2001 – 2018 The original closed in 2018. (OSRS survives, but it’s for true classic, not renaissance.) |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2004-|
| 2019|
|_____|
|
Flash games (Newgrounds/Miniclip/AddictingGames era) 📖 1995 – 2020 (When The Flash Died) Bored office workers, schoolchildren on library computers, an entire civilization of stick figure animations. A lost renaissance. |
~event~
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1990s|
| 2005|
|_____|
|
dial-up internet 📖 1990 – 2005 (replaced by broadband) “Turn off the phone, I’m downloading something.” Modem handshake was ASMR before the term existed. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1989-|
| 2007|
|_____|
|
aol cd 📖 1989 – mid 2000s They came in cereal boxes, magazines, mailboxes. Coaster for an entire decade. An estimated 1 billion were mailed. One billion lands filled. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1997-|
| 2007|
|_____|
|
Microsoft Clippy 📖 1997 – 2007 “It looks like you’re writing a letter.” Nobody asked. Everyone hated him. He was beloved because he was hated. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1996-|
| 2014|
|_____|
|
Hotmail (as we knew it) 📖 1996 – 2013 (became Outlook.com) Your first email address will probably end with @hotmail.com. This was your identity. Then Microsoft changed its name and the magic was gone. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|2000-|
| 2010|
|_____|
|
Forum signature and image of the week 📖 Early 2000s – ~2010 Your signature was 3 inches tall, animated, contained a quote from Terry Pratchett, and had 8 different platforms you operated on. RIP Forum Culture. |
___
/ \
| + |
| RIP |
|1998-|
| 2008|
|_____|
|
personal home page 📖 1995 – 2008 An HTML page with your name, your hobbies, a photo of your dog, an email link, a hit counter. Personal Web. Social media ate it up. The good guys are bringing it back. |
~Guestbook~
> onarici_98 @April 26, 2026 14:33
Haven’t come here for years. My eyes filled with tears. My icq number was 41502***
> nostalgia_seven @April 25, 2026 19:12
I met my first online crush on Yahoo Messenger. Now even bots don’t send me messages.
> oldnet_kid @April 23, 2026 03:44
Dial-Up Handshake is the most beautiful ASMR ever recorded. fight me
> guestbook_admin @April 22, 2026 11:00
Lighted a candle for Geocities tonight. Thanks for everything.
> (New entries coming soon… maybe…)
~web ring~
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~The Web of Forgotten Things~
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