I think every product shutdown should be accompanied with a video. Granted, Gary is a pro, but it feels very personal and comforting to have the founder explain why it was shut down.

Every time Google or Yahoo close down a product, they should have the team lead explain what happened in a video. It would soften the blow to the community and give a nice face to what often seems like a harsh move.

I'm not a user of Cork'd but I didn't find Gary's explanation at all 'comforting' - it seemed full of contradictions and along with Gary's unusual nervous body language (remember, he's a pro speaker and practically masterful in front of the camera when he is feeling confident) I went away feeling he wasn't really explaining the real reason(s) why they are closing Cork'd at all.

Which leads me onto your second point - that's exactly the reason Yahoo or Google don't do a video when they shutter a servie. They have no intention of telling you the real reason for shutting a service down (eg "it wasn't making enough money", "it's not strategically important any more") and if they gave a BS video we would all know it.

Which leaves me to conclude if you are not going to be straight forward about why you a closing a service (the rights or wrongs of that are beyond scope for here) then perhaps it is best to say little/nothing in a nondescript blog post or press release - and certainly not a video.

I found his video a little "managerial".

What a bummer. Reading the acquisition announcement from 2007 (http://hivelogic.com/articles/corkd-has-been-acquired) shows that the founders Dan Benjamin and Dan Cederholm will be pretty disappointed.

"Cork’d couldn’t have found a better home." Maybe it could have?

I guess it just goes to show you that once you sell, anything can happen, even if you're selling to someone you trust and respect.

I'm a big wine fan and always wanted to really like Corkd but it never really did what I wanted in a way that worked for me. I never found it a great place to find new wines, or store my library or find out if a wine was very good For example a lot of wines are scored, but a lot of times only by one user, I'd love to see a more robust scoring system.

Maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance and perhaps its gotten better, but it always left me wanting more. I think there is still a gap here to be filled. This is a passionate community that I think is still underserved online.

Unsurprising (and admittedly sad). I remember the old Corkd because it was (among other things) a design reference, and at least a very good example of how an "ancient" industry could benefit from an upgrade and an exploration in the world of social media. Then it was acquired and things kinda fell apart. I'm not a wine guy, but I was sad to see Corkd being abandoned, and I'm now sad to see it shut down.

I do know other people working in this space and doing interesting things, so this is bound to make someone's day a little better too, I guess.

Sidenote: I love how Gary pulls great communication even when delivering shitty news. He used to be about flair, but he's ultra tight on video these days (not that he was any bad years ago when he first started, obviously). It shows how dedication makes you good at something.

I was there from July '09 until I left to launch Forrst in March '10 -- really sad to see things come to this, but I hope there is still a happy ending in store for all involved.

I'd like to know if this was a case of being stretched too thin, or the model just not working. I'm not a wine guy, but I found myself visiting because of the design and because of Gary. It seems like with the right person at the helm, this could've gone further than it did.

Wasn't that right guy Gary? I would guess that the model just lacked something to tip it over the edge, perhaps.

well Gary didn't really have time to work on it, so though he could've been, I don't think he was dedicated to it enough in order to be.

Off topic: I find it really interesting how visually distracting the goodbye video was because he had one sleeve rolled up.

So what kind of code base do they have? Could they make it free/open source software?

I'd be interested in having access to the Wine database, not necessarily the actual reviews -- although that might be nice too.

A little bit of info on its creation, here: http://simplebits.com/work/corkd/

I believe it was built by Dan Benjamin on Ruby.

Nah. It's just a rails site. Some interesting stuff but most of it pretty straight forward.

Geez, I hadn't even heard about this site. Wish it wasn't shutting down.

Can anyone recommend an alternative?

SocialGrapes.com

Alexa Traffic Rank: 132,623 Traffic Rank in US: 53,916 Sites Linking In: 1,308

Any reason another wine startup wouldn't buy them just for the traffic?

He does mention he may sell it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBGIKes5HkE&feature=playe...

Totally! At the very least, they should put the site up for auction on Flippa or something.

I'm not sure that's a good idea. Cork'd is known as being a part of Gary's awesome empire. If it were to be sold, many folks would miss that memo, and still assume it was associated with him. If the new buyers made any missteps, that could reflect badly on Gary, even though he's no longer associated to them.

I'm more surprised about the current strategy to let the site sit there and rot. I'd think shutting it down, while still allowing folks to log in and export their data for a year or so, would be a better option.

Same could be said re previous ownership who are now associated with an abandoned project by those who missed this memo?

I'm sure demand media would buy it to exploit the pagerank

Presuming he has shareholders other than himself, he would be obligated to salvage that value over some theoretical effect on his legacy based on customers not understanding a sale. I certainly wouldn't work with or invest someone that shut a site down that had value for those reasons and without coming to some agreement with shareholders (and perhaps he has).