Eaters of the Dead
I find a morbid pleasure in reading about sites and companies that are now defunct, crashed, out of business. At least I do some days, and I wonder why that is? I’m not the kind of person who gets jealous when someone else is successful, not even if they’re competing with me in any way. In my mind, all success is good, since it will push whatever niche, product, or idea it is further into perfection.
So why are blogs like It Died and Twitter accounts like The Media is Dying so fascinating?
In fairness sake, I must confess that I hadn’t heard about the former one before, but found it in a BusinessWeek article featuring about these deadpool-centric sites. In the economic climate of today, there’s a lot to write about for sure.
Maybe that’s it then, the hunger to know who was the latest one to fall victim to the nasty circumstances?
I don’t know, but one thing’s for sure: This might become big business for some. While It Died have earned a whopping $24 from Adsense ads might not be the financial success that will get others to jump on the death eating bandwagon, it might very well be in a few months time. I predict we’ll see more sites focusing on failed startups and web projects, and an increase in blog posts about the topic as well. After all, it is something that we all are very focused on at this time.
Who knows who’ll be next?
Thord Daniel Hedengren is a designer, writer, and blogger, and also the former editor of The Blog Herald. He used to be a hotshot in the gaming industry in Sweden, but sold everything and went International. Most recently he wrote a book called Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog, and does loads of kickass design.