A few people have been asking about my site Popvine.com, and wondering what happened to it. Well, after about a year I’ve decided to pull the plug and shut it down.
Popvine was a celebrity gossip aggregator that harvested RSS feeds from celebrity gossip sites, including perezhilton.com, popcrunch.com, celebritybabyblog.com, and several others. It provided the title, excerpt, image, and a link to the source.
When I initially launched the site my intentions were to build a well designed site that would treat my girlfriends celebrity gossip addiction. The site was recognized for its design by smashingmagazine.com and a few CSS galleries (win). I never anticipated the doubling of traffic month-over-month and the excitement the site would bring me. With traffic topping 100,000 unique visitors last month the site was becoming a big fat target. Within the last two months I received several cease and desist orders ranging from attorneys representing Madonna (magazine cover pic) to Jamie Foxx (penis pic). Apparently, a few of my sources used images that where infringing someone’s rights (fail).
With respect for the web, photographers, and my fellow designers, I decided that what Popvine had become, or what it was becoming was not the business I wanted to be in. In the beginning it was fun learning about building an aggregation site and watching it grow. But waiting for the next C&D sucked!
Who knows, maybe Popvine will rise from the deadpool someday.
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6 Comments
On Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 4:22:pm
Sorry to see you getting slammed with so many C&Ds, totally makes sense to shut it down, but it is a shame cause it was a really well designed site.
On Sunday, October 25, 2009 at 6:37:am
Why not sell it off? It’d go for a small sum I’m sure.
I’ll take it off your hands if you don’t want to completely shut it down
On Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 12:24:am
I agree with the commenter above, why not sell it off and create more win from fail. At 100,000 unique’s you’re bound to get some offers. Maybe try someplace like sitepoint marketplace.
Also, how can anyone send you a C/D for content you’re just aggregating in summary from elsewhere? Not sure they have much legal grounds?
On Saturday, October 31, 2009 at 6:27:pm
Jim, I was receiving CD’s for the full scale images, not the actual content. However, I’ve fired up Google and read something about how image thumbnails don’t infringe on copyrights. I may put something back up without full scale images. Also, thanks for the sitepoint marketplace tip.
On Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 11:26:am
100K / mo. is huge! At least keep the homepage up with links inactive until you can sell it or change the images to thumbnails. Maybe put a message up that says you are receiving C+Ds from Madonna and have to make adjustments. Or put a poll up asking your readers what to do. Just some thoughts.
On Thursday, December 17, 2009 at 4:22:am
I see you put the site back up. I like the new minimal look. Nice job!
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