Microsoft kills off Popfly web service

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Microsoft has confirmed it will be shutting down its' Popfly tool on August 24, 2009.

In a message to the Popfly blog company official John Montgomery confirmed "unfortunately, on August 24, 2009 the Popfly service will be discontinued and all sites, references, and resources will be taken down. At that time, your access to your Popfly account, including any games and mashups that you have created, will be discontinued."

Popfly originally launched publicly as a beta service in October 2007. The web service was originally introduced for users to create both Windows Vista Sidebar gadgets and Windows Live gadgets. The tool was designed to help non-programmers in creating, sharing, and embedding mashups of content, feeds, web pages and gadgets.

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to TechFlash that the tool was being discontinued due to the current economic climate, "like many companies, the economic situation has caused us refocus and to reevaluate our priorities; while successful and popular, Popfly is not part of our refocused strategy."

Microsoft is advising Popfly users to visit Microsoft Web Platform Installer to continue web applications development, XNA for Xbox developement and Microsoft's Visual Studio site for Windows development.

(5 replies) #1 kInG aLeXo on 16 Jul 2009 - 19:12

lol
been hearing a lot about MS shutting down "unknown" services
anybody else heard about popfly for the first time ?

#1.1 Ridlas on 16 Jul 2009 - 19:20

Yep never heard of it.

#1.2 Rudy on 16 Jul 2009 - 19:38

#1.3 dlegend on 16 Jul 2009 - 21:19

I've never heard of it either.

#1.4 +Smigit on 16 Jul 2009 - 23:39

I did and did look at it. Didn't code anything for it but.

#1.5 Quikboy on 17 Jul 2009 - 22:32

Well then obviously you guys are pretty much uninformed about what's going on in the web....

#2 qdave on 16 Jul 2009 - 19:22

I did hear of it but never used it.

#3 digitalsoft on 16 Jul 2009 - 19:22

I've used this service before. Didn't like it... Glad they shut it down to be honest!

(1 reply) #4 M_Lyons10 on 16 Jul 2009 - 19:25

Popfly was something that I always thought had some potential, but it never really lived up to that unfortunately. Probably for the best that they drop it...

#4.1 +Callum M-R on 16 Jul 2009 - 19:42

M_Lyons10 said,

Pretty much this, I tried it out a few times but never saw too much potential. Nice idea, just needed something more.

(2 replies) #5 Examinus on 16 Jul 2009 - 19:26

I signed up to this but never used it and completely forgot about it.

#5.1 bob_c_b on 16 Jul 2009 - 23:25

Examinus said,

#5.2 Remote Sojourner on 17 Jul 2009 - 08:08

#6 Jdawg683 on 16 Jul 2009 - 19:59

never heard of it

#7 Izlude on 16 Jul 2009 - 20:27

i remember popfly wow. it was the most confusing thing ever. what ever would i use a mashup for???

#8 barteh on 16 Jul 2009 - 20:41

tbh, companies such as these spend billions on R&D and new beta programs. Its similar to Microsoft Vine, I cant see that catching on tbh.

#9 GraphiteCube on 16 Jul 2009 - 20:55

AFAIK, it is a game editor.

Too little noise about the beta product...

#10 +majortom1981 on 16 Jul 2009 - 21:27

If people really wanted to make their own games with little programming Multimedia Fusion by clickteam is a great place to start (some popular games were made using this).

#11 TonyLock on 16 Jul 2009 - 21:31

I also heard that Microsoft will discontinue their line of "Microsoft Hats & Socks". Apparently, the line was popular with some users but it failed to catch on.

#12 tuxplorer on 18 Jul 2009 - 12:44

Now only if they'd released it as a desktop app, it would have remained perennial and users would have owned it. This is why software-as-a-service will only complement desktop apps, never take their place.

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