On a good day we become obsessed with the start-up, preach about it to everyone we know, and then take some credit for it's success as it builds towards greatness. But often times the start-ups we love don't make it. Not enough people end up seeing the value in the product and the product shuts down, or the company's ambitions of their own success get usurped by a high priced suitor that strips it down for parts. Either way the outcome is the same: the product we love disappears from us.
This last week I've had to say goodbye to a number of products I've really enjoyed over the last few years, all for different reasons. News aggregator Summify was acquired and neutered by Twitter. Online photo editor Picnik was shuttered by its owner Google. And Plancast CEO Mark Hendrickson announced he will be giving up on the pursuit of his two year old social event sharing product after it failed to gain enough traction on the web.
While saying goodbye to Summify and Picnik is tough, both are in a popular space and have strong competitors that will serve as worthy replacements. Plancast, however, is by far and away the best social event sharing site I've ever come across. It's attractive, incredibly easy to use, and has powerful integration built in to other event platforms like Meetup, EventBrite and Facebook that helps make event sharing effortless. Whereas the old stalwart event planning site Upcoming.com was painful to populate, Plancast is a pleasure to use and explore. It's one of the products I can't really understand why enough people found compelling enough to use, and one that I'll really miss when it's gone.
The good news about being a web early adopter, though, is that for every start-up heartbreak there's a new start-up to take it's place. I wake up every day now excited to play with Path, I'm testing out Buffer to power my social publishing, and I've just signed up for News.Me to replace the hole that Summify will be leaving in my day. And I can't wait to preach to you about all of them.
