What are the ``10 causes of website death'' talked about by an organization working on preserving digital data?
A Million Ways to Die on the Web - Archiveteam
https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/A_Million_Ways_to_Die_on_the_Web
Archive Team is a team that was formed in 2009 by programmers, archivists, writers, and others, ``we started out of anger and a sense of powerlessness over the fact that the life and death of content was left in the hands of corporations.'' It is aimed at preserving digital data that is at risk of loss and also provides advice on preserving data and digital content.
On the page ``1 Million Causes of Death on the Web'', the Archive Team lists 10 major patterns in which websites disappear and content becomes completely unusable.
・01: Abandoned
If Company A, which created the service, is acquired by Company B and Company A's site is integrated into Company B's site, the service will not be fully updated after several years as a result of employee retirement or reassignment. may be stopped. Company A's website will then be shut down as it is no longer worth the expense and effort to manage it. As examples of this, the Archive Team points to GeoCities , a web hosting service acquired by Yahoo, and My Opera, a social network for the Opera browser.
・02:Competitor
If you operate a service in a limited market, you may find that most of your users are swallowed up by later, larger companies with similar services. For example, Friendster , founded in 2002, was an early SNS for posting photos and comments, and although it was initially very popular, it lost momentum due to the diversification of SNS, and in 2011 has been deleted.
・03: Budget and revenue
Anyone can easily create and release a simple website, but maintaining and updating the service takes time and money. If the website is not profitable, it will be shut down. Additionally, when a service unexpectedly gains popularity in a short period of time, the service ends due to rapid growth due to business decisions not being made to allocate budget for servers and hard disks. There are also cases.
・04: Migrate to new version
If a site that has been in service without any problems is significantly updated to a new version, data that only existed in the old version may be deleted. That change in direction isn't necessarily a positive change for users.
・05: Acquisition
Acquisitions can help companies that have difficulty maintaining their services, but acquisitions can also result in the end of certain web services. Associated Content, a service that distributes essays and news, was acquired by Yahoo! in 2010 and renamed
・06: Yahoo style closure
There are cases where the former company's service is shut down as a result of the acquisition, but some companies proceed with the acquisition without considering the relationship with their own services, or they choose the services of the acquired company at random. It may also close irregularly. The Archive Team calls this 'Yahoo-style' and says it's important to anticipate its closure and back up your content in advance.
・07: Personal troubles
Some websites are operated by a small group or individual. In such cases, the site may be closed due to the owner's death, change of heart, or inability to continue the loss-making service.
・08：Censorship
In the case of online content posted on YouTube, SNS, etc., there are many cases where it is deleted due to censorship by the service operator. Basically, violation of the terms of service is the cause of deletion, but in cases where videos are censored by algorithms such as YouTube, there have been reports of videos being deleted by mistake and being unable to be viewed again. .
・09: Regular deletion
4chan , an image bulletin board primarily aimed at English-speaking countries, and Imgur , an online image service, are known for regularly deleting their oldest data when they build new data centers every year. Please note that if you leave old posts for a long time, you may suddenly become unable to view them.
・10: Related data
For example, if the poster deletes a certain YouTube video, all comments will be deleted at the same time, even if 10,000 viewers posted comments on that video. In this way, if content is developed in the form of further posts in response to a specific post, if the original content is deleted, all related content will naturally disappear, so if there is something you are interested in, You need to save it.
The Archive Team describes these lists as 'common website causes of death' and notes that they are not a completely comprehensive list. It also advocates 'backing up in advance' as the best way to keep your data safe without suffering from these sudden deaths.
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in Web Service, Posted by log1e_dh