In July 2007, Yahoo acquired Taiwanese blogging platform Wretch.cc — but six years later, it has announced it will be closing down the site on December 26 this year.
The move, announced on Wretch’s website, comes as Yahoo is consolidating its various services in Taiwan. In particular, Wretch’s fate seemed sealed when Yahoo bought another huge blogging platform, Tumblr, in May this year for approximately $1.1 billion, and when Yahoo announced a further push for its photo service Flickr in Taiwan earlier this month, setting up a customer service center.
From September 2 onwards, new registrations for Wretch’s service will be suspended, though the site will operate as usual. Yahoo will let users retrieve a backup of all their data on Wretch as they migrate their online content elsewhere. Photos can be transferred to Flickr, while Yahoo has also partnered with Taiwanese operator Chunghwa Telecom to let users export their blog content to the similar hosting service Xuite. Yahoo will also start refunding VIP users their fees.
Following that, from October 30, users will still be able to browse Wretch but will no longer be able to add content or edit their blogs. On December 26, all services on the site will be shut down permanently.
Yahoo has been on a spring-cleaning spree shutting down products it deemed peripheral to its core focus, including the ancient search engine AltaVista in June this year. Earlier this month, Yahoo officially shut down its email service in China after announcing in April that it would do so.
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Headline image via Christian Heilmann/flickr
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