TwitBlock has closed down

TwitBlock was online for six years. That's a long life for a little side project, but in 2015 the time finally came to say goodnight. Below is the original closing down notice posted on August 24th.

From September 1st 2015 TwitBlock's scanning function will be disabled. Other pages will remain online for some time longer, but you won't be able to log in and scan your followers.

Thank you

TwitBlock isn't a company, it's one person, and I'd like to say thanks.

• Thanks to the roughly one million people who used the site since 2009.
• Thanks to Joe Prytherch who designed the Ghostbusters-inspired logo.
• Thanks to everyone who said something nice, and tweeted my work.

Special thanks to TwitBlock's 90 benefactors!

Without these kind people TwitBlock would have been closed a long time ago. Each one of these faces donated something towards my hosting costs, and it's hugely appreciated. This list will stay up for as long as possible.

Why does TwitBlock have to close down?

The usual story: time and money.

I've been blown away by people's generosity. The most generous donations have paid for months of hosting costs, but there's always next month, and the next, and unfortunately the donations don't cover it.

My lack of spare time is the biggest factor. Code and servers and databases all require maintenance. TwitBlock is old and hasn't been actively developed for years. Things go wrong, usually at the most inconvenient time, and I can't spend my weekends keeping it alive any longer.

Why don't you monetize it?

I've thought about and rejected the idea many times. Developing TwitBlock into a business would be a whole new project, and probably a whole new product. I never felt it was worth pursuing before, and I certainly won't be pursuing it with my current commitments.

Are you going to open source it?

It's a very old codebase built on a proprietary framework. I'm not going to entertain the idea of open sourcing it.

Can I buy it?

There's really nothing to buy. You won't want the code and the data all belongs to Twitter. I'd consider selling the domain name. If you're serious, contact me.

What will happen to my data?

All data cached from the Twitter API has been deleted, including OAuth tokens.

What are you doing now?

Very kind of you to ask. I'm working on Loco most of the time. It's a translation management tool for developers. Check out localise.biz.