"Bump and Flock will continue to work as they always have for now; stay tuned for future updates."
3 and a half months later the discontinuation announcement. In retrospect the statement "stay tuned for future updates" sounds quite sinister. The casual wording makes it sound like things will work out but in actuality it is far from the truth.
If you read any product acquisition announcement and it does not state any explicit plans to keep the product around then be fully prepared that it will be shut down.
I really think we need a word for that thing where a successful startup sells itself to a major corporation which promptly kills it and leaves the user base out to dry.
I'm struggling for some kind of reference to Microsoft's "embrace, extend, extinguish," but it's not really the same thing.
> Are services shuting down at greater rates that in the past decade?
Probably not, but the model has shifted and there's a greater offering of services nowadays. Given the choice available and all the niches covered, it's very easy to start using one of them and coming to rely on it for some facet of your life/work, only to have it shut down with little prior notice and leaving you out to dry.
The parent's point is that if you use locally running software without any dependencies on external services you're much more secure in the event you need to migrate away from them, since you can do it at your own pace and with much more control over the entire process. Also, if you're using FOSS, it makes it less likely the support will just cease since, if there's enough interest, someone else (even you) can carry it forward.
I don't blame Google. I blame the Bump founders. Their users were their responsibility, and it was their decision to shut the service down.
I only wish there was a way to incentivize people away from the "get acquihired and shut down" model. In this cloud reality we (the users) are repeatedly being led to depend on services that subsequently get shut down at random (with all the nice messages from CEOs that basically say "fuck you and thanks for all the fish"), and we have no way of fighting back.
That's one of the main reasons I hate the SaaS trend and wish it to die in a fire.
You actually used it? It was a clever hack, but it was always just a bit too much hassle. If I wanted to share something with someone (via mobile or otherwise), I found SMS/email/IM was faster, easier, and understood by everyone. And no extra apps to fumble with!
You never have to type anything with bump, and you get the entire contact info, image and everything. No way does SMS or typing out an email do the same thing. Even typing in bump into the app store and starting it for the first time to send a contact is less work than writing an email. Touch app store, touch search "bu.." there it is, install, share address, touch phones boom done. It probably takes about as many touches just to get into the email composer.
On my Nexus 5, if I'm on the right screen, it takes 1 tap (Gmail widget). But I agree that bump is way more convenient for sending this type of data and is well worth the effort.
http://blog.bu.mp/post/61411611006/bump-google
"Bump and Flock will continue to work as they always have for now; stay tuned for future updates."
3 and a half months later the discontinuation announcement. In retrospect the statement "stay tuned for future updates" sounds quite sinister. The casual wording makes it sound like things will work out but in actuality it is far from the truth.
If you read any product acquisition announcement and it does not state any explicit plans to keep the product around then be fully prepared that it will be shut down.