The 10 Biggest Website Fails In History

James Cummings

June 13, 2017

	Not rated
	Rate:

Websites are born to serve a purpose which is to satisfy a need. In the process of fulfilling their purpose, certain websites thrive and become larger-than-life corporate behemoths. Case in point, Google.

However, most websites have failed to maintain their relevance over the years, due to a lack of focus, strategic planning, and having their fingers in way too many businesses – in other words, stretching themselves too thin while trying to accomplish too much.

According to Brendan at Umbrellar.com, “most businesses go about starting a website without first clearly defining what it is that their website will offer and how it will go about showcasing its offering. And this is a recipe for failure. Some don’t even bother considering what web host will better serve their needs in the long run…”

This simply means that lack of vision and strategic thinking are clear pitfalls to avoid when running a website or building one for the first time.

Let’s have a look at websites that met unsavoury endings in spite of experiencing initial success.

Myspace: It started off as a fairly popular social network site. You could have even described it as Facebook’s top contender. But now, it’s nothing more than a music site.

Myspace started off on the right foot, but its glory days are way behind it now because its handlers lacked the kind of vision Facebook’s handlers have.

AOL: This tech giant was a titan in its heyday. One of the progenitors of email and a powerhouse after it merged with Time Warner. But even with such an impressive background, and once being worth $226bn, Verizon recently acquired AOL at $4.4bn. That’s still a big figure, but how the mighty have fallen.
Napster: Napster pretty much singlehandedly revolutionized the music industry by making CDs obsolete and ushering in a future of acquiring digital music for free. A lawsuit was Napster’s silver bullet, but its legacy lives on in our current digital music age.
AltaVista: Before Google, there was AltaVista. But AltaVista is now no more because they lacked a sustainable plan that would carry them into the future. The sightless AltaVista was acquired by an equally sightless Yahoo who shut them down in 2013.
Pets.com: Pets.com, due to no defined fault of theirs, faded into nonexistence because of market forces – more precisely the stock market. A failed IPO (Initial Public Offer) led to this site’s downfall after selling at $11 per share in February 2000, only to be valued at 19 cents per share by November.
Nupedia: This site was a lot like Wikipedia, but a major difference is that Wikipedia is still thriving. What was it that made Nupedia a dud where Wikipedia succeeded? Stubbornness on the part of Nupedia to adapt or evolve Wikipedia’s winning strategy of “public editing”.
Google Answers: Believe it or not, Google didn’t always win. Google Answers is an example of one of Google’s failures. But this failure was mostly due to how users abused this tool and turned it into a hub for plagiarism.
Daily Radar: This website was popular for providing the latest in gaming news. But it folded up after just a year of being active due to the dot com bubble burst. It now lives on as GamesRadar in the UK.
Digg: Where other sites lacked strategic thinking, this site simply made the wrong strategic decision. In a bid to evolve, Digg made some choices that led to it removing the key features that made it beloved by its fans. Said fans were unforgiving, and abandoned Digg’s social platform, an action that has left the site a sinking ship. To avoid such a calamity, sites should always know what their customers want and be sure to give it to them.
Yahoo: While not currently absolutely dead, Yahoo is well on its way to the grave. Especially after selling off its core web business to another fallen tech giant, Verizon, and planning to change its name to “Altaba”.

By now, you must have noticed a trend in this list. A trend of failing to adapt because of a lack of strategic thinking, or following the wrong strategic thought.

Most of these failed sites weren’t prepared for the future, and because of that, the world lost interest in them and abandoned them for sites that have proven themselves consistently capable of satisfying their online needs.