Show HN: Rip.so – a graveyard for dead internet things

Rip.so is a digital memorial dedicated to the apps and services that once defined the internet but have since been discontinued. From Yahoo! Messenger to Winamp, it serves as a nostalgic archive of the digital tools that shaped a generation.

_ .((. ,..-''~~``-.._ ,' ', / \ | | | ____ ___ ____ | | | _ \ |_ | | _ \ | | | |) | | | | |) | | | | _ < | | | __/ | | || _\ || || | | | | . s o . | | | |______________________| /______________________\ /__________________________\

:: the digital graveyard ::

The internet moves fast. They were on our desktops one day, the next their servers were dark, their domains squatted, their icons gone from our trays. Some died of mismanagement, some of acquisition, some of irrelevance. Some are technically still alive, but their soul left a long time ago. This page is a memorial to all of them.

We bury our heroes here. Pour a 56k modem out for them.

___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1996-| | 2024| || | ICQ ð1996 - 2024 "uh-oh." its sound was a generation's text notification before texts existed. its 6-digit numbers were the first online identities we ever cared about. now finally turned off after 28 years. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1999-| | 2014| || | MSN Messenger / Windows Live Messenger ð1999 - 2014 "appear offline" was a personality. nudges shook your screen and your heart. your status was a song lyric. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1998-| | 2018| || | Yahoo! Messenger ð1998 - 2018 BUZZ! BUZZ! the loudest possible way to say i miss you. its emoticons were unmatched. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1997-| | 2017| || | AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) ð1997 - 2017 the running yellow guy. away messages were poetry. door slam - "snoozyboi89 has signed off." gut punch. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2005-| | 2019| || | BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) ð2005 - 2019 PIN exchanges were corporate intimacy. R / D ticks were status anxiety. it died defending its keyboard. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2005-| | 2022| || | Google Talk / Hangouts (Classic) ð2005 - 2022 remember when google had ONE messenger? then six? then zero? rest in the merge. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2003-| | 2025| |_____| | Skype ð2003 - 2025 the boop boop ringtone. how you called your grandma in another country. washed out video. microsoft paid 8.5 billion for it and slowly turned it off. |

___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2003-| | 2011| || | MySpace (the real one) ð2003 - 2011 (ish) your top 8 was a public love letter and a public knife fight. profile songs autoplaying at 3am. tom is still your friend. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2002-| | 2015| || | Friendster ð2002 - 2015 the first social network most americans used. then it became a gaming site. then it disappeared. timeline of a forgotten pioneer. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2004-| | 2014| || | Orkut ð2004 - 2014 google's first social network attempt. weirdly enormous in brazil and india. 300 million users couldn't save it. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2011-| | 2019| || | Google+ ð2011 - 2019 they made you join it to comment on youtube. circles were a great idea trapped in a building no one wanted to enter. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2010-| | 2018| || | Path ð2010 - 2018 "a smaller, more personal social network." capped at 150 friends, like dunbar said. nobody wanted intimate; everyone wanted reach. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2013-| | 2017| || | Vine ð2013 - 2017 six seconds. comedic genius cremated by twitter monetization confusion. tiktok inherited everything but the constraint. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2013-| | 2017| || | Yik Yak ð2013 - 2017 (briefly back, then gone again) anonymous campus gossip. died of moderation, scaled by reputation. a brief, chaotic, location-based ghost town. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2009-| | 2017| || | Bebo ð2005 - 2013 UK and ireland's myspace. AOL bought it for $850M, sold it for $10M three years later. friend luv was a finite resource. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2003-| | 2018| |_____| | Hi5 ð2003 - 2018 huge in latin america and turkey. profile customization paradise. eventually pivoted to gaming, then gave up. |

___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1994-| | 2009| || | GeoCities ð1994 - 2009 the original homepage utopia. neighborhoods, animated GIFs, MIDI files, <marquee>, "under construction" signs. yahoo killed it in cold blood. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1995-| | 2024| || | Angelfire / Tripod ð1995 - technically still on life support still up but their hearts stopped beating in 2003. cousin of geocities, smaller, scrappier. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2004-| | 2017| || | Digg (the original) ð2004 - 2010 (the redesign was the actual death) power users had a religion. the v4 redesign was the schism. reddit ate the whole pie. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2003-| | 2017| || | Delicious / del.icio.us ð2003 - 2017 social bookmarking when bookmarking was social. tags were the future. then they weren't. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2007-| | 2015| || | FriendFeed ð2007 - 2015 the geek's social aggregator. facebook bought it, hired the team, pretended it never existed. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2009-| | 2010| || | Google Wave ð2009 - 2010 "what if email and chat had a baby?" they shipped it. nobody understood it. dead in 14 months. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2005-| | 2013| || | Google Reader ð2005 - 2013 RSS was the open social network. google killed it for nothing in particular and the open web has been mourning since. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2005-| | 2017| || | YouTube comments before Google+ ð2005 - 2013 they were chaos but they were OURS. the google+ unification was when youtube comments officially died as culture. |

___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1994-| | 2008| || | Netscape Navigator ð1994 - 2008 the browser that opened the web. lost the war to internet explorer, then mozilla rose from its ashes. forever the spiritual ancestor of firefox. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1995-| | 2022| || | Internet Explorer ð1995 - 2022 the punching bag. rendered tables creatively. crashed often. the <blink> tag's enemy. retired with grudging respect. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1995-| | 2013| || | AltaVista ð1995 - 2013 before google, this was THE search engine. yahoo bought it, neglected it, finally turned it off. babelfish died with it. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1996-| | 2010| || | Ask Jeeves ð1996 - 2010 a butler answered your questions. then they fired the butler and made it just "Ask.com". it's still around but you don't visit and neither do i. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1995-| | 2010| |_____| | Lycos / Excite / HotBot ð1995 - 2010s an entire ecosystem of forgotten search competition. dogpile remembered them. nobody else did. |

___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1999-| | 2002| || | Napster (the original) ð1999 - 2002 it broke everything. the riaa won the lawsuit but lost the war. it took 24 years for a paid streaming model to fully replace the dream. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2000-| | 2010| || | Kazaa / LimeWire / Bearshare ðearly 2000s - 2010ish downloaded a virus and an album the same afternoon. installed three browser toolbars by accident. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1997-| | 2013| || | Winamp (it really whips the llama's...) ð1997 - 2013 (and a few resurrections) skinnable, customizable, the player that taught us about MP3 ID3 tags. AOL bought it. AOL killed it. AOL. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1995-| | 2022| || | RealPlayer ð1995 - technically still alive, spiritually 2005 .rm files. buffering. their entire business model was making us click "no" to bundled software 47 times per install. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2007-| | 2015| || | Grooveshark ð2007 - 2015 free music streaming with no apparent licensing. legally questionable. spiritually beloved. eventually sued out of existence. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2010-| | 2015| || | Rdio ð2010 - 2015 spotify's prettier european cousin. better UI, smaller catalog, no chance. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1996-| | 2020| |_____| | Adobe Flash ð1996 - 2020 flash games, flash banners, flash intro pages. the entire weird and wonderful internet of the 2000s ran on it. steve jobs is still smiling. |

___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1996-| | 2009| || | Tamagotchi (the original era) ð1996 - ~2009 the first digital pet that taught us about death. school banned them. you fed it during math, came home from school, found it dead. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1979-| | 2010| || | Sony Walkman / Discman ð1979 - 2010 the cassette walkman invented "personal music." the discman taught us about anti-skip protection. the iPod evicted them both. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1992-| | 2013| || | MiniDisc ð1992 - 2013 sony's beautiful, ill-fated cassette successor. better than CD, smaller than CD, ignored by the world. a true cult hardware. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2006-| | 2012| || | Microsoft Zune ð2006 - 2012 the brown one. squirting songs to friends. the saddest social music device ever shipped. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1996-| | 2007| || | Palm Pilot / PalmOS ð1996 - 2007 graffiti handwriting. PIM in your pocket. "a computer in your hand" before phones did it. acquired, mismanaged, vanished. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2002-| | 2016| || | BlackBerry (as a phone empire) ð2002 - 2016 the keyboard purists. emails on the metro. the pope had one. obama had one. they swore touchscreens were a fad. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2010-| | 2017| || | Windows Phone ð2010 - 2017 live tiles were genuinely cool. nokia hardware was beautiful. nobody made apps for it. RIP the third platform. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2012-| | 2018| || | Pebble ð2012 - 2018 the kickstarter that started kickstarter. e-paper smartwatch. fitbit ate it. the apple watch buried it. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1999-| | 2007| |_____| | Symbian OS ð1998 - 2014 nokia ran the world on it. then the iphone came out. nokia kept shipping symbian phones for 6 more years out of denial. eventually everybody noticed. |

___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1999-| | 2007| || | Neopets (the golden era) ð1999 - ~2007 (still alive, just not the same) we taught ourselves HTML on neopets profiles. an entire generation of programmers were forged in pet customization. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2000-| | 2011| || | Habbo Hotel (peak era) ð2000 - 2011 (still alive, never the same) virtual hotel rooms. virtual currency. virtual relationships. real hours wasted. unforgettable. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2005-| | 2017| || | Club Penguin ð2005 - 2017 disney bought it, eventually killed it for an app version. the millions of children who waddled there are now adults nostalgic on twitter. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2001-| | 2018| || | RuneScape Classic ð2001 - 2018 the original turned-off in 2018. (osrs lives on, but this is for the actual classic, not the renaissance.) | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2004-| | 2019| |_____| | Flash games (Newgrounds / Miniclip / AddictingGames era) ð1995 - 2020 (when flash died) an entire civilization of bored office workers, school kids on library computers, stick figure animations. a renaissance lost. |

___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1990s| | 2005| || | Dial-up Internet ð1990s - 2005ish (broadband replaced it) "GET OFF THE PHONE I'M DOWNLOADING SOMETHING." the modem handshake was ASMR before the term existed. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1989-| | 2007| || | AOL CDs ð1989 - mid 2000s they came in cereal boxes, magazines, mailboxes. coasters for an entire decade. estimated 1 billion mailed. one billion landfilled. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1997-| | 2007| || | Microsoft Clippy ð1997 - 2007 "it looks like you're writing a letter." nobody asked. everyone hated him. he was beloved precisely because of how hated he was. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1996-| | 2014| || | Hotmail (as we knew it) ð1996 - 2013 (became outlook.com) your first email address probably ended in @hotmail.com. it was your identity. then microsoft renamed it and the magic went out. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |2000-| | 2010| || | Forum signatures & image-of-the-week ðearly 2000s - ~2010 your sig was 3 inches tall, animated, contained a quote from terry pratchett, and 8 different forums you moderated. RIP forum culture. | ___ / \ | + | | RIP | |1998-| | 2008| || | Personal homepages ð1995 - 2008 an HTML page with your name, your hobbies, your dog's photo, an email link, a hit counter. the personal web. social media ate it. cool people are bringing it back. |