Storytlr, a nifty web application centered around the concept of lifestreaming, will cease to exist at the end of this year. In a blog post, the two guys who built the service jointly announced the decision to stop operating Storytlr on December 31st 2009.
Unfortunately, all data that doesn’t get backed up by its users in the next ten weeks will be wiped out, although there is a simple tool that allows for easy export of all data and soon users will also be able to download a zip archive of their binary files (images etc.).
As to the why of the voluntarily deadpooling of Storytlr, co-developers Laurent Eschenauer and Alard Weisscher are not at all vague: they simply lost interest after deciding that the project could not be turned into a full-fledged company, and unsuccessfully trying to find alternatives routes or potential partners. And most importantly, lack of time:
The reason is simple: our lives have moved on, kids were born, house were bought, new projects appeared and we don’t have time anymore to operate this service properly.
We have spent the last months looking for alternatives, potential partners, and even thought about creating a startup around this project. Yet, in the end, nothing did really make sense for us and we have decided to pull the plug. It was a tough decision to make, it is a sad day, and we feel sorry for our passionate users who have put so much effort into their page and who have helped us improve the service through their many comments.
The two men are going to try to open source the whole thing, but are not willing or able to provide an ETA since it requires significant refactoring of code. Frankly, I wouldn’t hold my breath for it and check out alternative services such as Soup.io, Lifestream.fm or Sweetcron in the meantime for your digital lifecasting purposes.
As a farewell salute, here’s the probable highlight of the adventure for at least one of the initiators of the project: watch Eschenauer pitch Storytlr to Google co-founder Sergey Brin:
Shame. A real good lick of paint and gorgeous themes and it could have had a much better chance of succeeding & generating more interest.
Robin, thks for using my vid! And good luck to Laurent & Alard for the future!
Hope my site also do n’t end up there…Always there is need a to channel your efforts properly
It’s a pity it will be closed down, not so long ago I moved from Blogger to Storytlr because it was aggregating feeds and blog posts very good. I still hope some company will step in and wants to continue the service.
Why not just sell whole thing?
Who wants to pay for it?
Somebody who sees the way to make money with it?
Robin, despite being written up on TC and me posting in the comments several times a day I guess you still don’t know about us
http://www.StoryOfMyLife.com
We exist. We’re not going anywhere any time soon. And we have a non-profit (separate) Foundation that will avoid the problem of anyone losing their content in the future should anything happen to the company.
If it aint FOSS, you are in danger of losing all of your data forever, foundation or not. Choose something like sweetcron or amplifeeder instead. better than anything hosted and YOU get to choose if your data disappears in a puff of smoke like the poor users of Storytlr today.
Yeah! Why not just keep it on your computer and let it burn down with your house! or let it on an external harddrive just to have it fail and cost a disaster recovery person $2000 to extract! or how about a dvd that will be outmoded and no good after 20 years? Or a book that gets tossed out in an estate sale. Because most people “choose” to have house fires or floods or earthquakes and lose all their stuff b/c fear of “hosted” solutions.
love how people think open source is the solution to everything including solving world hunger and bringing peace to the middle east.
Any sane person backs up their data, you know that, but are over exaggerating to protect your bullshit business model.
If I choose to not back up though, ITS MY CHOICE, not some 3rd party who doesnt give a crap about me or my data, just my money.
Explain to me exactly, how the average non-technical Storytlr user is going to be able to download their Storytlr data, that is an ENTIRELY PROPRIETARY FORMAT, and restore it onto something else?
Face it grandad, DiSo is coming, and kleptocrats like you are going to end up the way of the dodo.
you must be 17 and have never had a real job is my guess, let alone tried run a company. Less than 5% of households back up their personal data, even today.
how would I know about that company’s format? I was talking about us, but apparently anything not “open source” (cue the Kumbayah music here) is “bullshit” to you.
you guess wrong antje, i’m mid 30s and am senior at a well known tech company. well done in entirely missing the point though. nobody is going to use your bullshit ’service’ because you, your app, your attitude towards data ownership, your design skills ( your site looks like 100% ass by the way ), your business model, your understanding of how DiSo technology is going to make you and your kind irrelevant, your idea that proprietory nonsense is the only solution lest i lose everything in some ficticious ‘fire’ – is all made of 100% FAIL. YOU LOSE. YOU GET *NOTHING*. GOOD DAY SIR.
Are there any actual users of this service here? Would you continue to use it – if I stepped up and committed to keeping it operating?
Anyone interested in helping me to keeping StoryTlr going please DM me @robodynamics.
Best,
/F
Good luck to the StoryTlr guys. It was one of the best web services I used.
1 year really isn’t a lot of time to stick with a project and see if it going to be successful, even twitter wasn’t that popular in year one. I guess that if motivation and interest is gone it’s probably best to shut the site down.
Storytlr guys even pitched their product to Sergey Brin: http://www.yout...h?v=2jbXtCzDOsg
For those looking for an alternative, please consider http://flavors.me
We don’t actually store your data, so there is nothing to lose. It’s the best looking lifestreaming service available.