DanThornton

Tech, Geekery, Pop Culture, Miscellaneous

And now Typepad is shutting down

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It feels a lot like I’m writing a eulogy for the Web 2.0 era at the moment. Some of my more recent posts have been about the closure of Ello, Keen and Tastebuds.fm. And now Typepad is shutting down at the end of the month.

Originally launched in 2003, Typepad was a simple blogging platform, along the lines of Blogger (launched in 1999), and the hosted version of WordPress (also 2005). Launched by Six Apart, it’s currently owned by Endurance International Group, who also own Bluehost, Hostgator, Yoast SEO and lots more.

And now Typepad is shutting down
And now Typepad is shutting down

I’ve never really used Typepad myself, having gone from Blogger in my very early days to self-hosted WordPress. But after finally starting to go back through old posts and archives on my sites in a bit of housekeeping, it’s noticeable how many people I know who used it ‘back in the day’.

And there are a number of people posting that they’ve experienced issues trying to export their content to upload to other platforms at the moment. That’s causing some stress with the deadline of September 30th, 2025 for Typepad to be completely shut.

It’s sad for anyone that loses their archive, and the fact that it adds to the huge amount of link rot on the internet. If you’re using a standard .typepad.com URL, then you won’t be able to redirect it, and even many of the people using custom domains years ago have either let them lapse, or not put any redirects in place (intentionally or not) meaning that anything mentioning those old articles will be broken.

Letting old content disappear is even encouraged as part of pruning sites, reducing crawl budgets etc. And it’s certainly something which can produce benefits for search rankings, but at the same time as someone who values history it’s sad to see somewhere between 30-50% of pages and links disappear over the course of a decade.

I’d always recommend self-hosting any site, as it gives you much more control over the domain and host, especially if you make sure you’re constantly backing up and exporting everything. And it’s pretty cheap – you can always give me a shout for cost-effective solutions.

And if you are pruning old content, you should always try and redirect anything with value to a relevant page/post that will still be operational.

That includes your entire domain if you’ve decided to rebrand etc, otherwise you might find yourname.com becomes a home of casino spam etc. Sometimes hidden amongst legitimate articles, or alternatively just replacing whatever was there before.

It’s also sad to see so many longstanding Web 2.0 era services slowly disappear. Even at the time, a lot of startups didn’t make it past their early months, but in 2025 it feels like many of the social web aspects have disappeared in favour of a tiny number of walled gardens operated by a handful of monolyths, just as in traditional print, film, TV etc. While I’m still hopeful and optimistic about the Fediverse, it feels that if younger internet users are spoonfed everything by the likes of Google, Apple, Meta, ByteDance and xAI, then they’ll never realise the joy of creating and owning your projects, connecting with people outside of closed networks, building and collaborating, and all the stuff that made the internet a fun and inspiring place.

Tastebuds.fm shuts down today

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It seems that my blog is becoming a grave site for various niche sites that sprang up during what might be increasingly referred to as the ‘golden age’ of the world wide web, before AI slop, when social networks were fun, and the current monopolies hadn’t completely taken over. There was Ello, Keen (which harked back to social sharing sites), and now Tastebuds.fm shuts down today.

Launched back in 2010, the idea was that you could meet people and date by importing lists of your favourite music from Spotify, Last.fm (which I’m happy to say is still going at the moment, 18 years and 101,798 songs after I first joined) and Facebook.

Tastebuds.fm shuts down today

Having signed up around 13 years ago, it’s one of those services that seemed like a really good idea but never really seemed to catch hold with enough people. I’ve dipped in an out over the years, mainly when single, but never enough for it to become a habit. Possibly because it straddled an odd line between being a social network, and a dating site.

The places I’ve lived over the last decade aren’t exactly in the middle of nowhere, but there never seemed to be enough local people talking about upcoming gigs. And being in a relationship, the dating side became irrelevant, meaning I’ve only logging in a handful of times in the last few years, mainly just to check out the bands and songs I’d listed on my profile in the past to see how my tastes have changed.

Judging by various comments around the web, most people seem to feel a similar way, although there are some nice stories of people meeting their significant other through the service.

Tastebuds.fm shuts down today

It’s not the first website or business I’ve seen close, especially given how much Google has done to launch and shutter services of the years (or the loss of ThisIsMyJam back in 2015, which hit harder at the time). But seeing various people shutter their projects feels different now, especially when I’ve had accounts with them for more than a decade, and the rollout of AI is changing the nature of the internet. I’ve let a couple of side projects quietly fade out of existence already this year, and there are some more that won’t auto-renew in the future.

I do wonder if it’s just the fact I’m getting older, but talking to my son, people at DPiP and online, there’s a malais and melancholy which seems pretty broadly shared across generations for how things were.

So while I probably won’t be mourning the loss of Tastebuds.fm on a regular basis, it’s always a shame to see services disappear, and it hits a little harder than it would have done a few years ago.

Is it goodbye to Ello, another niche network gone?

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I’ve never invested a huge amount of time into Ello, a social network for creatives which launched in 2014. But I did appreciate the idea of a community which promised to never show adverts or sell user data, and found an audience for some of my personal projects.

Even if it was funded by VCs from the start, which always seemed like a potential issue for the future. Particularly as it explored selling merchandise, affiliate revenues, collaboration and hiring options, and other ideas to bring in revenue before it was eventually acquired by Talenthouse in 2018. And seemingly shut recently in 2023, with an error message on the homepage, and the status page inaccessible for a few days.

Is it goodbye to Ello, another niche network gone?

I’m old enough to remember a time when social networks were springing up like daisies on a Spring lawn. Particularly in the ‘microblogging’ era of Twitter competitors launching on an almost weekly basis, and then being cut down regularly by the need to actually generate some kind of profit rather than growth metrics.

It’s why there’s a nostalgic, early-web feel to the current 2023 resurgence of Twitter alternatives as a billionaire turns it into a right wing bin fire. I don’t have any problem with someone having different political views to my own, or polite and respectful debate based on facts, but that’s very different to endless Blue Tick spam and pile-ons.

It’s also why I’m wary of committing much time and effort into any new social network with VC funding and investors. The need for financial returns means the timeline to carve out revenue against the big players will be limited by the requirement for payouts or acquisition. I’m not judging anyone who needs money to run their service, but it adds an extra challenge from the start.

The Fediverse gives me some hope for the future, whether it’s Mastodon, Pixelfed, Calckey, or something new being built on a federated system which means you’re not relying on a single point of failure due to an acqusition, or funding disappearing etc.

But it’s also why you should self-host your central identity. You should back up any of your valuable content, and anything you want to refer back to from other people. And ultimately, the internet is an ephemeral as a Snapchat message or Instagram Story, just over a longer period due to link rot, domains expiring, or storage limits running out.

It’s why physical objects haven’t disappeared, and vinyl, film cameras, diaries and notebooks continue to sell (and see various resurgences and sales growth). There’s been a return to physical communities after pandemic lockdowns and restrictions, and maybe that’ll continue. Hopefully with the right measures in place so that the vulnerable, immuno-compromised and anyone concerned about the growing number of problems associated with Covid infection can attend safely.

But it’s also why I still get a little sad whenever an online community or network closes, especially without warning and the chance for anyone to export their content or transfer their communities elsewhere.

Update July 4th, 2023:

Strangely, Ello appears to be back up and running, with no information or acknowledgement of the downtime. So it may have been a temporary technical glitch or error, which isn’t particularly reassuring for anyone who is investing lots of time and effort into creating and sharing content there.

But it’s definitely good news if you had anything on there which you wanted to back up and avoid losing forever.

Update July 27th, 2023:

And it’s gone again…