After nearly 17 years of operation, Zippyshare, a veteran file hosting platform, has announced plans to shut down at the end of the month. The BitTorrent blog TorrentFreak broke the news on Monday, citing high operating costs and declining user engagement. Zippyshare was founded in 2006 and boasted a clean user interface and no cost to users. However, as newer file hosting providers emerged, and ad-blockers became more popular, Zippyshare struggled to keep up.
Zippyshare’s success depended on its ease of use and simple yet effective user interface. The platform celebrated its first birthday by increasing file size limits to 100 MB. To meet increasing demand, Zippyshare launched the Zippyshare Uploader, giving users the option to upload files without using a web browser.
The announcement of Zippyshare’s closure over the weekend took many by surprise, given that it had been almost five years since the platform had issued any updates. The decision was attributed to a decline in user engagement, with competing file storage providers offering better functionality, performance, and value for money.
Despite being visited by around 45 million users every month, Zippyshare faced challenges from ad-blockers and rising energy costs. To finance the site, Zippyshare found itself having to place more ads, which led to blocked content and further declines in user engagement. The costs of maintaining the site, combined with declining user engagement, ultimately led to its closure.
Zippyshare had survived multiple challenges in the past, including complaints from entertainment industry players and copyright holders requesting the removal of over 14.5 million URLs. However, ultimately, the rise of adblockers and competition from other file hosting providers proved too much for the platform to overcome.
