There has been quite a lot of "deaths" in the Flash resources the last year. Its especially noticeable for me, since I edit for some humanly indexed catalogs of internet sites. One of the flash sites and discussion forums that disappeared in 2002 was were-here.com - a domain that is about to expire, and I can only wonder who will snap it up.

Other causalities are "zombies", that is - sites there are still around in a way, but are only corpses of the sites they used to be, abandoned like ghost ships sailing on the big sea of the net. I am not going to go into which sites that would be, and I am fairly sure that my own blog would have made it into such a list if someone else would have taken the time to make it.

What I wonder is how much of it comes from the general economical situation of net companies and related industries, and how much is to blame on other factors.

I have seen it being explained by the nature of product cycles. New sites popping up whenever a new product is released, to then die again when the "daily routine" returns.

I have no problem believing that it can explain some of the resource sites disappearing, but I can't help but think that it also can be explained by poor support from the "mothership". That discussion was up earlier, and we were asked what could be done to make it easier for the resource sites. One suggestion I had was that Macromedia could make available an affiliation program for the resource sites. If the resource sites would be allowed to sell the Macromedia products - then I actually think we would get better and more stable resource sites for Flash.

The question is, does it matter to Macromedia? And do they care if the resource sites starve to death? After all, the "mothership" has become one (if not THE one) of the biggest resource sites for Flash itself, with regular articles by the top Flash developers and designers, and skilled internal writers. They also host forums and other resources, so maybe - in the eyes of the "mothership", there is no need for the resource sites?

Old related writing:
Gonzo marketing related to the Flash community
Follow up II: Gonzo marketing related to the Flash community
Follow up III: Gonzo marketing related to the Flash community

A very good article about Google and optimizing for it and other search engines. Might be basic for some web developers, but it covers the basics of optimizing your site for your users and the search engines.

Google Village: Who are you optimizing your site for?