Embed Anything to Close

Though I’m sad to have my first “real” post back after Halloween hiatus be about a company closing, while I was on hiatus Embed Anything sent out an email to all users that it will be discontinuing the service on 11/20/2012.

The site had been in something of a holding pattern for quite some time. The company’s blog has not been updated since October 2010, shortly after the initial wave of attention to the service, and there hasn’t been many major changes to the site, service or plugin since then.

The basic idea behind Embed Anything, formerly known as EmbedArticle, was that webmasters could run the plugin on their site and make it easy for others to embed content, including both images and text, in their sites. This way, users could add all kinds of content the same way they now embed a YouTube video.

Content creators would then get revenue from the ads that would appear alongside the embedded content. This worked for both articles and images.

Unfortunately, the service never gained widespread traction and was rarely used. Though the announcement didn’t say why it was closing, it did say that the service will be shutting down on the 20th and, with it, the buttons, badges and plugins will stop working.

So, if you have Embed Anything on your site or know anyone who does, now is the time to start removing the feature. Hopefully though, someone else will come along and find a means to make content sharing practical and profitable for everyone involved.