How to get your information from a dead web service

September 15, 2013 6:49 PM

Way back in 2008, I started logging my son's milestones and growth on totspot.com, which mysterious closed earlier this year. (Here's their defunct Facebook page). I'd like to get that information back. How does one effectively contact a dead website?
posted by k8t to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Response by poster: And yes, obviously this was dumb to only keep this stuff on one site. I'm usually not so dumb. I was rebelling against the idea of a baby book. Now I have to fill out development forms about my 5-year-old and I don't remember any of this stuff.
Also we've moved 3 times since child was born so his medical records we do have, but it doesn't have information about milestones.
posted by k8t at 6:53 PM on September 15, 2013

Have you messaged the Facebook page? It's possible the administrator is still active on Facebook on his/her own account (if they didn't log in through a work account) and may be able to help you.

Otherwise, from poking around on the internet, it looks like most of the employees of totspot moved to a company called Charlie. Main team members are listed here -- you can try contacting them through LinkedIn to see if you can get a response.
posted by brainmouse at 7:19 PM on September 15, 2013

I'd personally email and Tweet at the founders and any other names you can find.

Totspot lists its founders here, including Michael Broukhim, who is currently a law student at Stanford.

Totspot was acquired by Charlie. The co-founders are now listed on Charlie's team - I'd email the co-founders, first, with a concise and very clear request to have your data ported elsewhere.
posted by barnone at 7:21 PM on September 15, 2013

TotSpot.com is registered through GoDaddy with an anonymization / privacy service to hide the actual registrant's name and contact info. The best you can do — if you don't have any information about whoever ran the site — is drop a note to the relay address and hope it gets correctly passed through to someone who actually cares, and then hope that they respond to you. That address is "[e-mail]".

But there is no real reason, aside from kindness, why someone would even respond to you, much less retrieve your data (likely to be a complex and time-consuming process, depending on the format that the data is stored in). That is unless you offer to pay them. If that is an option I would be clear in your initial email that it is at least a possibility that you would negotiate. (Just don't sound like some sort of weird Nigeria scam.)

I think the chances of you actually getting any usable data are very, very slim.

(On post-preview ... I never thought of checking Crunchbase. That's a good find; you might try pursuing the original operators directly rather than going through the domain's maintenance address.)
posted by Kadin2048 at 7:21 PM on September 15, 2013

Michael Broukhim (broukhim) on Twitter.
posted by barnone at 7:25 PM on September 15, 2013

Looking at the FB page I see you certainly aren't the only parent in this situation. And at least some were paying to use the service...?

Strength in numbers and all that -- I'd try to form a group with the other affected families and go after them. Were you one of the ones with a paid subscription? Seems pretty shabbily handled.
posted by kmennie at 8:05 PM on September 15, 2013

This is exactly the sort of problem that makes Jason Scott very cross, and his Archive Team's goal is to be "an offloading point and information depot for a number of archiving projects, all related to saving websites or data that is in danger of being lost" Perhaps they can be of persuasive help.
posted by slightlybewildered at 8:59 PM on September 15, 2013