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Within the last month, two very popular recovery-related Web sites have disappeared from the Internet and are no longer available to online members of the recovery community as places to gather together for mutual support.
Another Empty Bottle, which was located at alcoholismhelp.com, has simply disappeared -- returning a 404 Not Found error. SoberVoices.com is no longer hosting live voice chat meetings for 12 step groups. The Web site now is merely advertising its voice chat software for commercial use. Update: SoberVoices is back up and running again and now charging a monthly membership fee.
Another Empty Bottle (AEB), which was developed by Tom C., had a large following of 12 step members gathered in its chat rooms and on its bulletin boards, but it also was a very popular source of information about alcoholism and recovery-related information in general.
Tom had redesigned the Web site in the past couple of years as an "Alcoholism Index" which worked much like other "portals" on the Internet like Yahoo! and the Open Directory Project. AEB was always highly placed in the search engines and provided many thousands of people with links to information they were seeking about alcoholism.
Bills Not Paid
Tom and I worked together on several projects over the years and when I discovered that AEB was no longer available, I made repeated attempts to contact him to find out what the situation was and to offer to help in any way I could. I have not been able to contact him, via email or by telephone.I have no idea why AEB has been abandoned. I know that the reason it is no longer on the server is because the bills were not paid. Why they were not paid is another question, which so far has gone unanswered.
I do know why SoberVoices.com is no longer hosting meetings. The costs of providing the voice chat software and the bandwidth to host that type of meeting is expensive. Mike, the Webmaster at SoberVoices, tried to "pass the basket" to allow members to help with the expenses, but got little or no response.
He simply could not continue personally financing the Web site by himself. Mike said he is exploring options in an attempt to bring SoberVoices meetings back to life, but thus far has not solved the puzzle.
AEB and SoberVoices are not the only services that are no longer available to members of the recovery community, but they were two of the most visible. Many members of the recovery community have always used "free" services on the Internet, such as free email accounts and even free Internet access.
Internet Winter
Because of the economic crunch in the dot-com world in general -- due to a crash in stock prices and a reduction of advertising for online companies -- many of those "free" services have disappeared or have been greatly curtailed. Because those "free" services depended upon advertising revenue to continue operating, they are now either trying to charge for something they once gave away or they are going out of business.And it's not just those offering free services who are affected. A total of 176 publicly traded companies filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2000, many of them dot-com companies, and another 126 have already filed this year.
Some 482 U.S. company stocks are now below $1 a share. Many of them are technology companies. Such a depressed stock price does not always mean imminent failure, but often tends to signal major problems too difficult to overcome.
There is a very large recovery community online, which is going to be affected if more companies which provide email, dial-up access, and Web hosting go out of business. For example, many of the email discussion groups use YahooGroups for their listserv. After six quarters of showing a profit, Yahoo! lost $97 million in the first quarter of this year.
The "Internet Winter" has affected all companies with an online presence in some way. It appeared that the economic situation was beginning to show signs of turning around, but now with the events of September 11 in the U.S.A., the future is even more uncertain.
And yes, About.com has likewise been affected, but so far, we are hanging on.
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