R.I.P. O.D. in Meeting Mr. Jesus Christ

14 years and 25 days of my life recorded there. I'm not sure what I feel about this yet.

Open Diary

Open Diary to be shut down in next two weeks Dear OD Members, It is with a heavy heart that I am announcing today that we will be discontinuing service on OD in the next week. Over the last fifteen years, Open Diary became the first social network to grow on the web, and was home to many thousands of talented writers and bloggers – many of whom became like family to each other. It has been an amazing experience – I will never forget the interactions that I have seen among our users. When people ask me about what made OD special, there are so many things: - An email that I got early on from a gay member who had found acceptance among our community (way back when our society was different), and that acceptance saved his life, at a time when he was considering ending it. - Another from a member in New York City, who told me how before OD, he rode the subway every day, and never noticed all the faceless people that were there with him – but after OD, he realized that every one of those people had a story, and had an internal dialog that made them special. - So many times that our members came together for another member in need, providing support and compassion, proving that the online world didn’t have to be cold and impersonal – but could be a living, breathing organism – something people had trouble grasping fifteen or even ten years ago. We showed the world that the internet could be a human place. It has been a wonderful time, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Unfortunately, the business of OD has reached a point where the site is no longer sustainable. I’ve never made it a secret that this site has been run by me with the help of some fantastic volunteers, and there’s not some large corporation with deep pockets behind it. As such, it is a business that could only operate as long as it made enough money to cover its expenses. This journey has reached a point where we have to accept that this is no longer the case, and OD will have to cease operations. I can not guarantee on which day the site will go offline, but it will be sometime in the next two weeks. Please take some time to download your diary, using the options in the Utility menu. Every piece of writing and data on this site is invaluable in its own way, and I want to make sure they are preserved. Thanks for all that you have done and contributed, to something that truly was unique and special. Although I have not been here as much the last few years, I will miss this place and all of its special citizens. Most especially, thanks to the volunteers who helped keep the place alive over the years – EWS, X, and Gaia – no words can express my thanks to you for all that you did. Thanks, and best wishes to you all. The DiaryMaster