Technologies that lost the battle of time

As StumbleUpon shuts shop and shifts to new pastures, we take a look at all the great things in tech that were lost in the past few years

Over the weekend, there was a flurry of activity on the Internet as a large section of netizens witnessed the passing (or transition, depending on how you look at it) of StumbleUpon, one of the sites that defined how a large section of the online populace interacted with the web in the early 2000s. The announcement that the accounts on the site would be transitioned over to Mix, a similar content discovery platform, was met with an outpouring of nostalgia, prompting us to take a trip down memory lane to revisit some of the things from the realms of software, hardware and mobile, that were once dear but are no longer available in their original avatars.

The meme

Perhaps one of the original demonstrations of the Internet coming together to establish an alternative communication syntax; memes and rage comics were all over the Internet a few years ago, before things like Instagram filters and Animoji came along to divert people's attention. 9gag, one of the original hubs of meme-related humour, slowly transitioned to other popular content, introducing multiple new sections to aid content discovery. However, upon the website turning ten years old years old on July 1, a large section of users are trying to restore the content to that from the glory days, resulting in famous memes and rage comic storytelling making a reappearance, and dissuading unrelated posts with a cryptic 'This is not a meme' comment.

Yahoo's communication domination

Even before 9gag's time, a large section of Internet users depended extensively on Yahoo's mail services and Messenger, the company's chat client, for communication. The rise of a new wave of Internet giants has seen Yahoo slowly fall from grace, before eventually being acquired by Verizon in 2017. Messenger itself has trudged along until now, but Verizon subsidiary Oath, which manages its digital divisions like Yahoo and AOL, has announced that the plug will be officially pulled on Messenger on July 17, striking the final nail in its coffin.

StumbleUpon

Started in 2001, StumbleUpon helped a generation navigate the Internet's murky waters long before personalised content recommendations and social media discovery pages. It used a selection of user-defined interests to constantly serve up interesting websites and content related to these interests at the press of the 'Stumble' button, leading to otherwise undiscovered spaces, like experimental music websites or mind-boggling HTML5 demos. As of June 30, StumbleUpon announced a transition to Mix, a social media-driven content discovery and recommendation platform made by StumbleUpon's co-founder Garett Camp's startup studio Expa.

Flappy Bird

In 2013, when almost every game developer from upcoming indie studios to gaming legends like Nintendo, were trying to crack mobile gaming, Vietnamese video game programmer Dong Nguyen launched a simple game about an odd flying bird trying to navigate a world similar to that of Super Mario. With a simple premise, unwieldy controls and an excruciating difficulty curve, Flappy Bird took the world by storm. By early January 2014, the game was topping app store charts and increasing Nguyen's wealth significantly, before the developer pulled the game over concerns of 'user addiction'. The game's popularity has died since, and while knockoffs exist aplenty, none of them have enjoyed the same fame as the original, with many blaming the controls or the implementation of the new titles.

Pebble

Much like Yahoo, Pebble was the victim of acquisition by one of the giants in the wearable space -- Fitbit. Pebble proved that Kickstarter-funded projects can go on to be successful and that smartwatches were a niche worth exploring, with their own custom-designed OS featuring retro graphics, and promising great battery life thanks to E-ink technology. Even after Apple and Google got into the wearable space, Pebble enjoyed a solid following, but chose to be acquired by Fitbit in late 2016. Fitbit has since released its own fitness-focused smartwatches, the Ionic and most recently the Versa, but the quirky, irreverent charm that people saw in Pebble was lost in the acquisition.