Now Google Is Shutting Down Keen After Almost Four Years

Continuing a trend for social networks and sharing sites I’ve used and found interesting (e.g. Ello), now Google is shutting down Keen after almost four years.

Unlike Ello, there’s some notifcation that it will be deleted from March 24th, 2024, and users are able to download all data to a local zip file. What you’re supposed to do with all the links you’ve shared and any content you’ve uploaded is less clear.

I suspect far less people will mourn the end of Keen. When it launched in 2020 as a type of AI automated Pinterest, many people pointed out it lacked a human social element. You could team up with other people to collect links and upload content, but it would have benefitted from more social features and interaction, similar to Google Reader, which is still missed a decade after it was discontinued.

And while there are other good RSS and social sharing sites, even the most popular haven’t reached the same kind of scale and ubiquity possible when there’s a big, established tech company and audience to bring onboard.

The flipside is that many people may have become more jaded about investing time and effort into Google products and experiments, especially anything which isn’t part of their core business model. Considering the long list of services killed by Google, even if useful or fairly successful, not to mention the absolute mess of Google Analytics 4, and it’s hard not to feel a little cynical when the Keen team sign of with ‘until next time’.

Compare that with Kottke.org, which turned 25 in 2023, and has supported Jason Kottke and his family since 2005. While it might be difficult to time travel back to the late 1990s and share everything on our own blog rather than an endless succession of social media sites, there’s nothing to say it’s too late to start now in 2024.

In a world increasingly full of AI content and recommendations building on top of algorithm-driven news feeds, and big investor-owned publishing companies struggling, there may never have been a better, or more important, time for people to share their personal recommendations on a space they can own, care for, and maintain indefinitely.