For those of us who have been on the Web for a long time, part of the wired existence is watching sites take root, bloom, and then wither away. Some were casually visited sites, but there are the ones we sank way too much time and attention into. They are virtual communities, that perpetual next big thing on the Internet, serving as places to socialize, argue, befriend, defriend, and quite often reflect the social order of high schools.
I’ve been online in some form or another since 1993 with two decades of watching all this happen. Experience is a great educator and a little over thirteen years ago I got quite the education about people online (and offline) thanks to a movie news and fan site called CountingDown. Due to various soap opera experiences and a decision to embrace “real life,” I departed it permanently around 2003. I never looked back.
Which makes it strange that I’d be flashing back to that period of my life this week. I had the feeling the site was no more and sure enough, www.countingdown.com doesn’t even bring up an error message. So I did a search for information about it being shuttered and at first only came up with people asking the same question.