MLKSHK Shutting Down

LOL, Nope!

When are you shutting down?

September 1, 2014. It’s a Monday.

Why are you shutting down?

MLKSHK isn’t our primary source of income and it’s certainly not our primary focus. Despite earning very little from the site we still have to answer tech support, deal with spam, fix minor issues, fix major issues, keep the servers updated, sort out billing issues, and worry about the months we get linked on Reddit. Sometimes the server and bandwidth bill are more than we took in for the month—this is scary.

Will you sell it?

Of course! We would sell it to someone who will commit significant resources to it. Out of respect for the community we wouldn’t sell to anyone who we didn’t feel was a good fit.

Can I get all the images I shared in a zip file?

Yes! Click the link “Request Zip File Of All My Images” on your account settings page. It should take about a day to process your request if we don’t get inundated with requests. UPDATE: We are working with the Internet Archive Team to make sure they have everything they need to pull the site into their archive. 

What if…?

We appreciate the passion the users have for the site but there really is no other option than this. We explored many ideas for making more money but nothing worked for us.

I just bought a subscription, can I get a refund?

Yes. Please email [email protected] so we can figure out your refund.

Will my subscription be canceled?

Every subscription will be canceled before June 1.

Thank you to everyone who visited, bought a subscription, said nice things about us to your friends, and of course thanks for sharing.

Thanks also to Ivan Kanevski and Mark Paschal for helping us build the thing. And thanks to Chris Ereneta, David Barry, and Justin Williams for writing iOS code against our API. Also thanks to our advisor Anil Dash for helping us figure things out over the past few years.

Bye, and please keep in touch!
Amber (@amberdawn) and Andre (@torrez)

Comments

[Dave Rutledge]

I'll miss mlkshk but mostly wanted to say: That was fun! I hope at least some of it was fun for you too. Thank you for the hard work and money you put into this.

[Jonathan (Jonson) Rouse]

Will miss this place tremendously, came here all the time. Thanks so much for creating it, Andre & Amber!

[Knutmo]

I will sadly miss mlkshk :(

Thanks guys for all the fun!! You know you are the best, don't you?

[cb]

Thank you all - mlkshk is one of the greats

[mare]

Thanks for all the fish. Will miss mlkshk dearly, but understand you're pulling the plug.

[TheStorm]

OK, this saddens me. I understand it, but it saddens me.

[stringy]

I understand. I hate to think that something that brings me so many laughs is a burden to you both. I hope you can find a good buyer.

[pjbond]

very sad. MLKSHK is the second best website ever. wish you well in bigger and better things, cannot imagine what though. x

[dogwelder]

Thanks for making this place. It is grand. I'll miss it.

I'm looking forward to your next piece of awesome.

[Mickie]

:( Bummer! Thanks for letting me be part of it. It was fun! :)

[Jasper zelf]

Awww such a shame, but sounds like good decision. Thank you, I will miss this place!

[Jordan Brock]

Thank you so much for building mlkshk, and for keeping it alive for as long as you have. I know the amount of work that can go into just keeping a site running, which gets doubly hard when you're not earning enough money to cover the operating costs, let alone the time spent.

I could tell the day was going to come at some point, but I feel quite sad about this, possibly sadder than if another unnamed site should get shuttered.

Also, thank you to everyone who has used mlkshk over the past few years. It's the constant stream of amazing images from other shkers that has made the place what it is.

Of course, thank you Amber and Andre. You are both super awesome.

I shall live in hope that somehow an employee/user buyout could be organised, and it could become a paywall type site for it's members.

[Joao Ferreira]

despite being separated miles and miles from all of you I found this group to be a one hell of a group. I could use the regular anonymous face the internet lends but in due time I found out that in a next trip to the US (or London @nicksantospedro) I'd be in for meeting some of the merry bunch. because this internet thing has lives behind the screens and,
come on, wouldn't it be funny?

there's so much to be written but I lack the words..

hope y'all a good life.. hit me on FB if you wish (Joao Ferreira, [email protected]) to keep in touch .. why not a closed FB group? I'll surely want to keep in touch. if you happen to drop by Portugal, make sure to come and say hi to me in Lisbon.

Amber and Andre - a big "obrigado" for all the great work.

[Caitlin Burke]

First, thanks, Andre and Amber for making this wonderful thing. It had its practical use but also turned out to be a delightful thing in itself. And on a personal note, its lightness and ease actually got me writing again, which years of flagellating myself over my fallow blog had failed to do :)

In the unlikely event I win the lottery, you'll be the first people I call!

Second, on that zip file: just images or files with source info preserved?

Thank you!

[Chad N. Freude]

good. bye.

[Bill Keaggy]

.

[bummed party]

I am new to the mlkshk thing but am bummed whenever a cool thing cannot self-sustain -- what level of resources would be needed to make that happen?
What aspects of the site or site maintenance costs the most in time/money?

[JadenKale]

I will miss MLKSHK terribly. It's been something I look forward to most evenings when I'm done with work and too exhausted from the daily grind. Thank you, Amber & Andre for all you've done for the community. I can only hope someone will be willing to snap it up and continue to make it as awesome as it is.

[Benjamin Ragheb]

If you have to shut down, you should consider contacting someone at the Internet Archive and making your public content available to them, either to include in the Wayback Machine or simply as a giant tar ball, so that at least it doesn't all go down the memory hole.

[Everydayscott]

MLKSHK was truly one of God's own prototypes. A constant delight. I will miss the Friday Dance Party. I will miss seeing all the homemade dinners, handmade GIFs, and unmade selfies from this wonderful online community. Good god I'm gonna miss it.

[frogger]

:(

thanks so much guys for this great site. it was part of my morning routine :)

where will i post my secret anna kandrick pics now :(

:D

[Julie Hamwood]

Thank you Amber & Andre so much for making this. We would sit in bed at night, sharing our iPad, and flip through mlkshk, laughing. All the best with everything you're making now.

[lavoie]

Thank you guys for having such a great service over the past few years. Excited for what comes next!

[P. Accas a.k.a. Lord_John_Whorfin]

So, I'm pretty new here, and sure, maybe we *are* at the Bargaining stage, and yes, I read the "What If" question above, and that many months, server and bandwidth alone exceeded income. But I also saw the screenshot from 8 months ago, showing ~60,000 users and only ~500 subscribers, grossing ~$11,000. So here's my question: if breakeven was even *close* to possible at <1% of users, what could happen if that quickly jumped to 3%? 5%? Dare I say 10%? And by quickly, I mean this week.

If the shutdown is not a money issue, then I wish Andre and Amber the best, and will miss this site like hell, and godspeed to everyone. But if it is, if the problem *is* fixable with money, then jeez, you can have my $24 YESTERDAY, and I can't help but think there are just a couple thousand more good folk who feel the same (i.e., just 3%), who simply weren't aware – as I wasn't – how critical subscribing was.

Too often, we (humans) let a good thing go away because we don't care enough to do what's needed until it's too late. I hope we (Mlkshkers) are not too late yet, and if it's just a matter of the Mlkshk folks not wanting to just plain ask people to pony up, well, let me be your shill. Tell me flat out that tripling (or more!) your subscriber rate won't do the job, and I'll shut up. But otherwise Take All My Money, and let's spread the word – and I mean NOW — that we've all got a tiny bit of the financial burden to shoulder to keep this good thing alive as long as we can.

[speculation]

Bandwidth costs could be severely reduced by hosting all images across a bunch of free services. I suspect labor/time might be the biggest factor.