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Cowbird was an online storytelling community active from 2011–2017 — containing
nearly 100,000 stories from 15,000 authors in 185 countries.

It was designed to be a beautiful, ad-free environment for heartfelt, personal
storytelling — and a slower, more contemplative alternative to existing social
media spaces with their corporate agendas. Ultimately, Cowbird sought to provide
a public library of human experience, so that the wisdom we accumulate as
individuals could better live on as a part of the commons.

Its early resonance and popularity were later eclipsed by newer platforms such
as Instagram and Medium, and by 2015, usage of Cowbird had considerably waned,
just as attention economies and screen addiction were entering the public
awareness. In 2017, responding to these dynamics, we made the decision to close
Cowbird to new contributions, but to keep it online as an historical archive.
That summer, we invited some of its most prolific authors to gather in person,
to share stories around a bonfire, and to process the closure of the space
they’d grown to love.

Over the next few years, keeping the digital archive accessible became more and
more of a technical challenge, as our servers were repeatedly hacked and taken
offline, our version of PHP grew ever-more obsolete, and finally in 2022 our
longtime hosting company announced its acquisition by GoDaddy — meaning the pro
bono hosting that Cowbird had been receiving for more than a decade would be
going away as well.

Given these realities, and with a slightly heavy heart, we’ve decided to let go
of Cowbird once and for all, allowing the project to live on as a beautiful
story, with deep gratitude for everyone who participated along the way.

Thank you for trusting Cowbird to care for your personal stories — we’re sorry
we weren’t able to fulfill our wish to keep them online forever. At the same
time, we’re heartened by these words of Toni Morrison:

> At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to
> photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough.



— Jonathan J. Harris & David Lauer
Founder & Technology Director, Cowbird