After a tumultuous history including lost data, upset users, and seemly endless name changes, TheLinkup (aka MediaMax) has shut its doors. Users of the storage site will be unable to access their files after August 8th.

The company has a long (and extremely confusing) history. In our last post on the site, Charlie Jackson, one of the company’s investors, left a comment explaining the following (we’ve added links to relevant events):

The original entity was Streamload. The product name was changed to MediaMax and it was still the same service. Steve Iverson, the founder, was still CEO. Patrick Harr was brought in to be CEO and to help raise money, Iverson was moved to being CTO.

When a C round investor was found, Mission Ventures, this venture firm wanted nothing to do with the consumer service of MediaMax, only wanted to be in the back-end business. The C investor allowed a spin-out to be done, and the new company was allowed to take the name MediaMax and the consumer customers, but no software, no servers, no data. The front-end software was licensed to the spin-out, but for a limited time. Steve Iverson took over this company, while the existing company, with all the servers and data, was re-named Nirvanix. Virtually all the employees stayed with Nirvanix. Nirvanix is trying to compete with Amazon’s S-3 service.

Around the time this spin-out was happening, Nirvanix engineers screwed up royally and accidentally deleted half the files. Most were recovered over time, but it took months, and there was never 100% recovery (I never got some of files back).

MediaMax wrote new front-end software and recently changed its name to TheLinkup. Nirvanix wrote new back-end software, but had trouble migrating all the MediaMax files from its old software to its new software.

MediaMax/TheLinkup coudn’t make all its customers’ files available, ran out of money, and not having a viable business anymore, had to shut down (the C investors never put any money into the spin-out).

The company’s latest venture, TheLinkup, was supposed to be a social network centered around storage, but it barely managed to get off the ground. This could be considered a blessing in disguise, as a storage-centric social network would have probably had a difficult time building a substantial userbase, and may have simply resulted in more lost time and money.

We’ve added the TheLinkup to the Deadpool.

MediaMax, a perpetually controversial San Diego based startup, says we need a social network around paper products file sharing. More on that in a minute (as well as a relevant video clip from The Office), but first a note on a new scandal brewing.

In the past few weeks, we’ve received a number of complaints about MediaMax, the troubled file storage site that lost vast amounts of its users’ files last summer. It seems that the company has once again stepped between its users and their data, though this time it was intentional.

The site (which was formerly known as Streamload) has decided to relaunch as The Linkup, a social networking site based around storage (yes, you read that right). As part of the transition, MediaMax chose to disable access to all of their free accounts. Users were given two options: either pony up $6 a month to continue having access to your files, or download them before they deleted your account.

Unfortunately, it seems that many users never got the message. The company says that it notified its users through email, but given the number of people that unexpectedly lost access to their files, it seems that these warnings weren’t enough.

From one disgruntled user:

About notification: they say they did, but it must have gone into spam. I have saved spam for more than a month, but there is no mail from them. Also, all the previous mails like email notification and changes passwords always arrive in my inbox, why should their email go in spam? They are lying openly.

If you were on a free account, and you haven’t downloaded your files yet, you’re screwed. They’re gone.

Oh yeah, if you did decide to go with the Pro account, you’re also out of luck for the time being. The company is apparently having difficultly getting files transferred between MediaMax and The Linkup, and the files probably won’t be available until late June (The Linkup launched on May 10 – that’s nearly two months of downtime).

Those fearless users who aren’t too concerned with having access to their files should try out The Linkup, “The social network for file sharing.” Why do we need a social network around cloud storage and file sharing? The Office gives us the answer: “its all about creating a one stop consumer experience.”