Proof that you not only need a good idea and good first execution, but that you need to keep up evolving it as time goes. This is precisely how you could describe Popfly, a site that had the original purpose of providing a way to create Silverlight powered mashlets in the same way you create feed mashups with Yahoo Pipes. Later on as the site was slowly updated and Silverlight evolved to version 2 it became more of a Silverlight Game Engine Editor.
So it is now more known for its silverlight games than for the mashlets that were its focus when it launched. But that is now also coming to an end as it is going to be shutdown on August 24 of 2009.
My guess that it is because of Silverlight 3 release. Popfly launch version (The Mashlets State) was based around mostly on Silverlight 1 and 1.1 and the Game Engine Editor came on the back of what was Silverlight 2.0 Alpha and then the RTW Final version when the last big updates to the site were made. Silverlight 3 brought huge changes and while is backwards compatible, Microsoft must not see a point in updating it since it would need a big revamp so it could properly highlight Silverlight 3.
That and because of Microsoft Cost cutting, Layoff rounds and the moving around of employees inside the company.
So it a real shame because a version of Popfly for Silverlight 3 would have needed to be focused on mashlets again like in the first version but with way more power than what you had back when it launched. The same comes to games if they had updated their game engine and game editor.
But if you didn’t knew the site until you saw this very news that it was going to close. Not to worry, a month is enough for you to check out the cool games in the site and if you happen to like some of them; You can also download them before Popfly shuts down and play them later even after Popfly no longer exists. Thanks to the Popfly Game Downloader.
via ZDNET (Mary Jo Foley)
