#vss365 today - Permanent Archival

Last updated: 2023-12-31

It is with much sorrow and sadness that I must announce this.

The #vss365 today website is entering permanent archival on December 31, 2023. After that day, it will no longer be updated with the newest prompt or send out email notifications. Additionally, no new email subscriptions will be accepted starting December 17, 2023.

To be clear, the #vss365 prompt is not going away. Only my website. The prompt existed before my website, and will continue to exist after it.

Why?

There's... a lot, but I'll try to keep it short(er). Feel free to skip this section to the archival plan.

Since my last update about the Twitter/X trouble saga on June 11, I was able to get everything regarding the Twitter API back up and connected to restore prompt archival and distribution, as well as fill in all missing prompts between June 10 and September 21. But at the end of that post, I posed the following question and possible answer:

Is the updated site cost ($360/yr to $1,560/yr, assuming no increases) sustainable? Honestly, probably not. If enough people provide regular donations, I'll do all within my power to keep it online and running for as long as I can. But history shows that things like this can only last for so long.

I now have the certain answer: no.

It's not just money at play here, though money is part of it. To be fair, I've literally never asked for donations towards running the site, so most people probably didn't know it was an issue. I created a donation page and might have mentioned it once or twice, but never directly asked. That's partially due to my rather inability to ask for things like that, but also because I did not want, much less need, to ask. Yes, some people donated over time, for which I am appreciative. But as I said in my previous post, even donations end over time, and $1,560/yr USD is a big amount for a small hobby site. The $100/mo USD cost to be able to read data from Twitter is insane and unsustainable, and the total yearly cost to run the site is unjustifiable unless I am a small business that subsidized or fully covered the site operations, and I am not that.

A second player is the elephant (Bird? Letter?) in the room: Twitter/X. To this day, the API paywall taking effect has never been announced or mentioned in hindsight. It merely happened overnight and that was it. I'm sure I wasn't the only developer who woke up that morning to find their service suddenly broken. The entire fiasco around the API can be attributed solely to poor management. Not technical issues, not feasibility, but purely management. This whole thing could have been less problematic, controversial, and uncertain, but it wasn't, and none of that has changed. If anything, all of these things have gotten worse/more intense as the year has progressed.

A third element, connected to the Twitter/X uncertainty, is the life of the prompt outside Twitter. In my opinion, there is no true Twitter replacement. Mastodon and friends, BlueSky, Instagram Threads, and other "new Twitters" never went anywhere. One key aspect of #vss365 is it is bound by 280 characters, and the Hosts are all on the same platform. So what happens when people move to different places and delete their Twitter accounts (as multiple previous Hosts have now done, making my site the only source for months of prompts)? I might be able to integrate with their developer API, assuming they have one. But then I'd have to manage multiple, changing integrations and possible prompt sources. That's not to say I couldn't do just that. The logistics could be resolved. But that is a lot of work and effort, which leads directly into my final point.

The final nail in the coffin is time, specifically, my time. This is probably the biggest reason for the archival. As much as I truly wish I could continue to maintain the site, I just can't. As a full-time software developer for my day job and many different "extra-curricular" activities, there are limits to my time investments. There are some new possible opportunities arising that, if I want to pursue them, other things of mine must end. And, no matter if I like it or not, this site is what must end.

And I don't like it. I don't like any of this. But it's the path forward.

The Plan

Because I don't want to leave anyone in the dark, here's my archival plan. Note that once we hit January, the dates are a bit fuzzy and subject to change, but the goal is to finish everything within the first two weeks.

• Inform the #vss365 Ambassadors of the archival (completed 2023-11-20)
• Publicly announce archival with blog post, tweets, one-time email, and alert banner on website (completed 2023-11-25)
• Cancel Twitter API subscription (due 2024-01-01)
• Delete the subscription email list, because I don't want it! (due 2024-01-08)
• Create the #vss365 Wrapped 2023 stats (due 2023-01-13)
• Final site update to add stats and show banner noting permanent archival (due 2023-01-13)

To everyone who has ever supported me and #vss365 today in any form or fashion, even to simply say how much you like it, thank you. Thank you for embracing me and this hobby project of mine. Thank you for your patience as errors occurred, goofs happened, and things got worked out. Thank you for sticking with me through these Twitter/X changes. This was the first thing I've ever made that actually went somewhere, and for that, I will always be grateful.

About this time 4 years ago, former #vss365 Host Moderator Arthur Unk messaged me asking if we could chat about the site's existence, and my intentions. That one hour phone call literally changed everything. While I've not participated in #vss365 for a bit now, I still look for my own email every morning. This community has been and has made a massive impact on me, which is why this archival is difficult. It's been a privilege to see the hashtag grow, to be included in the #vss365 anthology twice (which is one of the best collections of short writings I've ever read), and to have the personal fulfillment of seeing something I created on a literal whim 5 years ago reach nearly 700 people's inbox a day (as well as a unknown number of daily visitors to the site). It's been an amazing time.

I'm not going anywhere, and maybe I can get back to participating in the prompt again. I'll see you soon with the #vss365 Wrapped 2023 stats.