Typed, a simple blogging platform from Realmac Software’s Dan Counsell, is shutting down for good on March 1, 2018. The platform was funded with an Indiegogo campaign that had 879 backers, and went live about the same time Apple World Today was starting up in February of 2015.
The platform was supposed to shut down on January 31, but Counsell decided to keep the service running another month as some users still had live sites up and running. However, all good things must come to an end, so everything REALLY shuts down on March 1st. As Counsell noted, “Make sure you have exported your content by the 1st of March. Once the servers are switched off, all content, including user accounts, will be deleted. Once the servers are deleted at the end of this week there will be no way to get your content back.”
Typed was an innovative, simple, and inexpensive service. It started as a Markdown editor, but then added the ability to publish to a hosting service for an incredibly simple blogging platform. Sadly, the low cost of the app and the service could not sustain the business; my personal guess is that many people may have signed up for a trial plan and then decided to either not expend the effort of keeping up a blog or decided to use free services like WordPress, Medium or Tumblr.
Counsell previously provided several suggestions to users who want to continue blogging; micro.blog and ghost.io are both open source/open web services. Realmac’s own RapidWeaver is a powerful and easy-to-use website development tool for Mac as well, although users will need to supply their own hosting.