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Show HN: Product Graveyard – Commemorating the most memorable dead products

265 points| ndduong | 8 years ago |productgraveyard.com | reply

126 comments

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[+] ndduong|8 years ago|reply
Hi, I'm the creator of Product Graveyard, a fun way to keep track of and commemorate our favorite products that are with us no more.

I worked on this as a side project during my summer internship at Siftery. For building the site, I used a bootstrap grid for front-end structure and node.js to help with filtering and inserting the data.

Please join in by contributing a funny story or eulogy for one of the featured products.

[+] al452|8 years ago|reply
Excellent site, love it.

I can't provide a funny story or eulogy, but have a scary one... "Microsoft Lync" [item 10 on the list right now] is not dead, it's aaaalllliiiiivvveeeee...

Those of us who work in the nightmare planes, where Microsoft products are mandated, once hoped that Microsoft's "Skype for Business" would bring us a bit of non-corporate real-world better-because-it-had-to-compete-on-its-own-merits product to save us from the eternal pain of Lync.

But no, it turned out that "Skype for Business" REALLY IS just Lync, with only two changes. 1) rebranding 2) somehow, despite changing almost nothing, they managed to break copy-and-paste, it doesn't work reliably any more

It's a zombie horror story!

[+] krylon|8 years ago|reply
Now you made me remember how much I miss GrooveShark...

Also, the list makes me realize a problem with putting everything "in the cloud": with a traditional desktop application, if the vendor goes belly up or just doesn't feel like working on it any more, at least you can keep using the version you already have. If the whole thing runs on the web, and the vendor decides to pull the on those servers, it's just gone.

[+] citrusui|8 years ago|reply
I love the design of Product Graveyard! Personally, I would’ve gone with darker colors, seeing as it fits the whole “graveyard” theme.

One nitpick: isn’t it inefficient to generate a unique banner image for every dead product? Each one is largely the same, except for the product logo being in the center. Would help to remove these banners or compress them so pages load faster on mobile.

[+] justboxing|8 years ago|reply
Your UI & UX is amazing! I also love the following below each gravestone.

> Did you know _____ ? Please share a eulogy or funny story.

lol.

[+] fragmer|8 years ago|reply
Really interesting site to browse, thanks! I would love to see a screenshot or two added for each product, ideally captured back in its heyday/prime.
[+] balladeer|8 years ago|reply
delicious.com is dead but del.icio.us is alive - in read only format. Archived as it was in the beginning. Just logged in and could see my bookmarks. At least that seems to be the plan of idlewords.

Apps are not listed? Like Sparrow is missing - the email client killed by Google.

[+] _ZeD_|8 years ago|reply
I feel winamp should be here
[+] kenips|8 years ago|reply
That's cool. Definitely bringing some memories back. If scroll position is maintained when going back to the homepage I'd definitely stayed longer :).
[+] magic_beans|8 years ago|reply
How did you collect all the data?? Manually, or did users upload it themselves??

Looks great by the way!! Really interesting to peruse.

[+] Frogolocalypse|8 years ago|reply
Lync is installed on my work laptop. Not quite graveyard yet...
[+] Rodd45|8 years ago|reply
This looks pretty good, I will check further later.
[+] mmanfrin|8 years ago|reply
I'm still sore about Google Reader. I haven't found another reader that has quite found the right UX to replace it.
[+] xeno42|8 years ago|reply
https://bazqux.com/ was the closest i found in terms of UI and performance with the amount of feeds/items i go through (~1000 items/day) - Been pretty happy with it since Google Reader shutdown
[+] onion2k|8 years ago|reply
What I find really interesting about lists like this one is that many of the entries are really great ideas that only failed due to poor timing or bad luck or a single error. The fact that someone failed to build something huge the first time around is not evidence that copying one of the entries wouldn't work now. It's just really hard to know which idea might work if it launched today instead of two years ago.
[+] tradersam|8 years ago|reply
Funny story, Lync[1] still exists. Actually it was an update to Skype for Business, at least on our systems at work.

I'm using it right this minute: http://imgur.com/a/qQ648

http://productgraveyard.com/products/lync.html

[+] ghostly_s|8 years ago|reply
In reality, your IT admins have control of a GPO/registry key that will declare whether your client should be called "Lync" or "Skype for Business" when you launch it. In typical Microsoft wisdom, I guess they provided this to prevent too much culture shock in the transition. You're using the Skype for Business client with the "Lync" skin.
[+] bicx|8 years ago|reply
It's sobering to look at all these products and think about how developers poured thousands of hours into something that no longer exists.
[+] peckrob|8 years ago|reply
This is actually one of the reasons I do a lot of non-tech hobbies like woodworking and making wine. So much of what I do is ephemeral. It exists as bits stored in a computer, it not something I can physically touch. Literally everything I've ever written at work could, and probably will, cease to exist one day.

But the wine rack I made and the bottles in it aren't going anywhere. Well, okay the bottles will, but there will be more. :)

[+] cal5k|8 years ago|reply
Makes you reflect on the ephemerality of life - entire civilizations that existed for thousands of years have come and gone. A computer program that's been around for 10 years has had a good run.
[+] Clubber|8 years ago|reply
If they got a good exit payout, it's probably a lot easier to cope with.
[+] mfrommil|8 years ago|reply
Missing one of my all-time favorite dead products: Google Wave
[+] wingerlang|8 years ago|reply
If you had a newsletter like "new dead website of the month" if something died, I'd sign up.

I also would appreciate a gallery of screenshot for each product to get a feel for what it was.

[+] AndrewKemendo|8 years ago|reply
I feel the worst for Meerkat. They basically had a few weeks between blowing up huge at SXSW and then getting effectively shut down by Twitter with the launch of Periscope.

No justice in this world.

[+] akeruu|8 years ago|reply
I really like the tone and the realization.

Just a small thing that bother me is that on my desktop machine, the second column is not aligned as neatly as the others (due to two lines descriptions maybe ?)

[+] ndduong|8 years ago|reply
Hmm, that's strange. I'm not seeing it on my desktop. Do you mind posting a screenshot of it?
[+] blacksmith_tb|8 years ago|reply
For me, the Vine tile doesn't have an app icon (looks like uBlock is suppressing it), and everything below shifts up:

https://kek.gg/i/3kytsn.png

(probably an argument for min-height)

[+] franciscop|8 years ago|reply
From the feedback here in HN it seems clear that you need a "suggest product" button. Maybe it could even be a Disqus on the bottom on the home page, which would automatically give you up/down votes functionality (;
[+] ndduong|8 years ago|reply
We actually do have a suggest product button on Product Graveyard! If you click into any of the products and click the "Submit Autopsy Report" button in the nav bar, it should take you to a form where you can suggest which product we should feature next. Here is the direct link to it: https://siftery-track.typeform.com/to/n5IT7u
[+] dspillett|8 years ago|reply
If you are going that far back how about including the original LapLink (and intersvr in MSDOS6 that implemented similar features). Pushing files over null-modem or the parallel port equivalent for extra speed was a godsend back when proper networking was relatively rare at home (or in small offices) so floppy-net was the main alternative.

The company still exists (was "Travelling Software, now renamed to Laplink Software) but obviously that specific product is pretty meaningless in today's environment unless you are playing with museum-piece hardware for nostalgia/shits/giggles.

[+] ghostly_s|8 years ago|reply
I love everything about this except the name. To laypeople, "product" != "software product", and it's revealing your bias. Why don't you just call it Software Graveyard?
[+] ndduong|8 years ago|reply
That's a valid point. There's definitely a software bias now, but the name product is more extensible. I just added 4 more featured products today and will be adding more in the future!
[+] nemo1618|8 years ago|reply
I'm guessing it's a pun on ProductHunt.
[+] arscan|8 years ago|reply
Great job, this is a fun concept that is well executed.

I was going to add Geocities, but I was surprised to find out that it is still available in Japan. Anyone have insight as to why Yahoo kept it alive in that market?

[+] toast0|8 years ago|reply
Yahoo! Japan was a joint partnership of Yahoo! and SoftBank. From what I could tell while working at Yahoo!, Yahoo Japan was able to use whatever software they wanted from Y!, but whatever they developed wasn't accessibly by the rest of Y!

So, they had their own installation of geocities, and didn't need to take it down. Yahoo auctions is also big in Japan, but was killed everywhere else. (Edit: change was to is)

[+] rangibaby|8 years ago|reply
Yahoo Japan is probably the only Yahoo anyone (willingly) uses. E.g. Yahoo! Auctions is the equivalent of eBay here.
[+] CM30|8 years ago|reply
Congrats on making such a neat site! It's quite interesting to see all the dead products and services that (often) never quite achieved their full potential.

That said, one thing does bother me here, and I'm not sure whether it's a mistake or not.

Basically, the all products lists don't seem to link to the individual pages for the closed products. In most cases that's likely fine (since I doubt you have separate pages for every single product listed), but it would be convenient to have them link to the product's page for more details when they're available.

http://productgraveyard.com/see-all-products-a.html

Other than that, it looks pretty good.

[+] hasselstrom1|8 years ago|reply
Upvoted on PH as well - You did a great job mate. Well done on the UI and the concept.
[+] daxfohl|8 years ago|reply
Huh, I knew I had a zombie bitcasa account that I assumed I'd been paying for but was too lazy to cancel, and was surprised to see it on your list! I think there's a market for a product that individually curates a person's miscellaneous accounts (say it watches your bank/credit card accounts or whatever) and alerts them when fees increase or the company goes bankrupt or it looks like a zombie account (and maybe offer to close it for $10 ($30 for comcast)).
[+] roryisok|8 years ago|reply
Great site, brings back memories. A few little issues I found

1. On mobile I have to scroll past all the featured products to get to "all products". A link at the top or a hamburger menu would be great!

2. No search?

3. "all products" doesn't appear to include "featured products"? For instance Picasa and Google reader are in featured but not in all.

Other than that its a lovely design and a good concept. Well done.

[+] ndduong|8 years ago|reply
Thanks for the feedback. There's now a navigation bar for easy access to "all products". All products should include featured products now, and I will be implementing search in the near future :)
[+] srcmap|8 years ago|reply
I love google desktop search (RIP 2011.)

Last year I found a windows version of it online and found it still usable even in windows 10. Very unsafe I know - I did use ProcExploer+VirusTotal to check its binary signatures on 60+ scanner sites.

It still much better/faster than the native Win10 Cortana search.

Love know if there any open source clone of it?

[+] snth12oentoe0|8 years ago|reply
Love the site! However, it looks like you have some apps listed on the main page, but not in the list of all apps. For example, I submitted Aperture because I couldn't find it in the "A" section of the list of all apps. But I see that it is actually there on the main page near the bottom.
[+] SippinLean|8 years ago|reply
>Fireworks was not a unique child. It was not different from Photoshop or Illustrator so Adobe shut it down.

That's not true, it was notably different than the two, it was replaced by Adobe XD.