Is Ringo Planning To Shut Down? (Update: Ringo Shutting Down!)

Is it really true? Is Ringo actually planning to shut down?

Surprised? Well, so were we. Gautam Ghosh, a management consultant and a well known blogger, happened to tweet in, telling us that he received an email from the Ringo team stating that they might be shutting down, in near future. According to Gautam, this particular email has been sent out to every Ringo member.

I did contact Gautam, asking to forward the email to us. Moreover, after contacting Ringo through their contact form, I ended up receiving a standard impromptu email with general ways of troubleshooting.

While trying to ponder on the whole “rumor”, I felt it’s not too unnatural for Ringo to finally feel the heat of the market. Here we have a software giant like Yahoo backing up for Flickr. Then along comes Google backed Picasa. Another company that is definitely worth a mention is Photobucket. I am sure, everyone who has used Flickr at least once shall agree that the only reason he might not use it regularly is because they don’t give you unlimited space for free. As far as Picasa is concerned, their team has come up with a wonderful desktop photo editing software and of course, no one can ignore the 6GB of hosting space that Google provides. Moreover, Photobucket has been one site that had almost seen it’s doomsday but then rose up like a phoenix. I agree there site’s too bandwidth consuming and neither do they provide unlimited hosting space. Photobucket also has a bad habit of coming up with “bandwidth exceeded” message if any account happens to exceed the free 1.5GB monthly bandwidth limit.

Despite everything, when one tries to compare with Ringo, the team of Ringo has hardly ever come up with innovations. What’s different in their site is that they allow you to connect to family and friends. Personally I find that a useless feature, unless I also get updates of whatever those “friends” have been up to, on their respective profiles.

Anyway, how about you? Are you a Ringo user yourself? Has Ringo sent you too an email as Gautam claims?

Update (June 03, 2008) : Finally, I too receive the so-called email from Ringo stating that they are shutting down. Here’s a copy of that email.

 Dear Ringo member,

After much consideration we have decided to end the Ringo service.

As of June 30, 2008 the Ringo service is ending and you will no longer have access to your Ringo account.

How do I get my photos?

We created a new feature that will allow you to download your photos to your computer. Click here to download your photos.

You may also order a CD of your photos. Just sign in to your Ringo account, click on the “You” tab, click” Order prints” and then “Photo Disks”.

How do I get my videos?

Videos uploaded to Ringo were hosted for us by a partner. This partner has decided to end this service and after June 30 videos uploaded to Ringo will no longer be available.

Thank you for being part of the Ringo community.

The Ringo Team

I remember the time when Yahoo Photos has shut down after acquiring Flickr. They, of course, allowed the users the option to shift their hosting service to Flickr but apart from that, they also supported Photobucket, Shutterfly and a few other photo hosting  services. Ringo says that the videos were hosted by a “partner site” and that they had decided to end the service. I wonder who the partner might be.