A veteran of the blogging scene: Typepad will close at the end of September
When blogs became a mass phenomenon, Typepad was one of the reasons. A long decline followed, and after 22 years it is now over.
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After more than 20 years, the history of Typepad is coming to an end in a few weeks. The blogging software helped turn online diaries into a mass phenomenon at the start of the millennium. In a blog post, those responsible now explain that Typepad users will no longer be able to log in after September 30. The accounts and all associated services will then be irrevocably deleted. From this date, the company will also no longer accept payments; any additional amounts paid will be refunded. Anyone who wants to can still export their data until September 30, for example to import it into a WordPress site.
No new users for five years
Typepad has been around since 2003 and the service was intended to make the blogging software Movable Type available to a wide range of users. However, the service was not used for blogs by private individuals; various media organizations have also relied on it in the meantime. However, the service later fell behind WordPress, among others, and no new users have been able to register for it for five years. In March, in response to a user's inquiry, those responsible assured them that there were no plans to discontinue the service for users who were still active. Nevertheless, an export function was announced at the time, which has been available since this week.
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The technology on which Typepad is based, Movable Type, was developed by the company Six Apart and dominated the blogging scene in the early 2000s. However, those responsible then took on venture capital and pushed ahead with the rapid expansion of their company. Finally, Six Apart changed the licensing of the previously free software, whereupon a large part of the enthusiastic user base switched to the competitor WordPress. Even later, Six Apart released Movable Type as open source again under the GPL, but even then there was speculation that this was probably too late. Two versions later, open source was over again. Movable Type is still around, but for Typepad the story ends 18 years later.
(mho)
