Link: The­Fea­ture :: The End of the Road.

Five years ago, we set out to build a com­mu­nity to explore the mobile Inter­net. Now, that com­mu­nity is strong enough to move ahead on its own.

When TheFeature.com was launched in the fall of 2000, it was a pretty rev­o­lu­tion­ary idea — a cor­po­ra­tion like Nokia set­ting up an inde­pen­dent, non-branded site with the task of get­ting peo­ple think­ing and talk­ing about the future of mobile com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Its goal was straight­for­ward: “The­Fea­ture aims to be noth­ing less than a voice — an opin­ion­ated, inde­pen­dent voice for the mobil­ity com­mu­nity.” With the dra­matic changes in the Inter­net pub­lish­ing land­scape since then, and the rise of blogs in par­tic­u­lar, TheFeature’s role as a leader in the com­mu­nity per­haps isn’t as nec­es­sary as it once was, with many qual­ity sites dis­cussing rel­e­vant top­ics and pro­vid­ing out­lets for the vibrant com­mu­nity that’s sprouted up around the mobile industry.

So in that sense, we can say “mis­sion accom­plished.” It’s with a heavy heart, then, that we must reveal this will be the last post on TheFeature.com. When the site launched, 3G was still a far-off, almost pipe dream con­cept, and GPRS was barely a real­ity. We helped begin a con­ver­sa­tion around these ideas; we now leave that con­ver­sa­tion to carry on in the com­mu­nity that sup­ported us.

The­Fea­ture has always, at its heart, been a com­mu­nity — so we extend an enor­mous thanks to those who par­tic­i­pated in it, either by com­ment­ing or inter­act­ing, just read­ing or link­ing to us and car­ry­ing on the dis­cus­sion of ideas pre­sented here in their own space. We couldn’t have accom­plished every­thing with­out you. We also owe a huge debt of grat­i­tude to all our con­trib­u­tors, par­tic­u­larly those that have worked with us over the last two years. We’ve been very for­tu­nate to assem­ble a staff of some of the best thinkers and writ­ers, who in turn have worked tire­lessly to come up with great sto­ries to share.

Now is the time for us to step back, and let the con­ver­sa­tion and com­mu­nity move for­ward on its own. It’s been a great ride, and we’re glad that every­one could join us. So, would the last one out please turn off the lights…

Rest in peace. I learned A LOT from The Fea­ture and enjoyed read­ing the reg­u­lar authors there, includ­ing Howard Rhein­gold, of course, and Dou­glas Rushkoff. Some­times the com­ments on arti­cles were the best part. I even posted one or two jour­nal entries.

Sorry to see you go!

Via Ajit.

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