As the whole world prepares to says goodbye to 2013, people who love to gorge on technology news will have to bid a sad farewell to All Things Digital (AllThingsD or ATD), which will put out its lights at the same time the fireworks light up the midnight sky to welcome the New Year. After a six-year run, the site that sprouted from the "D: All Things Digital Conference" started by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, will shut down and take a new form.
Mossberg and Swisher were the leading technology columnists of The Wall Street Journal. However, the AllThingsD proponents and Dow Jones were not able to seal a new deal to continue the publication. As the publication splits with The Wall Street Journal, Mossberg will also leave the paper at the end of the month.
Mossberg wrote his last column for WSJ on December 17 and recalled some of the most influential devices he reviewed in the last 20 years.
The AllThingsD team, known for its coverage of the technology industry and startup companies will metamorphosize into another media outlet under the umbrella of new investors such as NBC Universal, and a new name, come 2014.
"On December 31 at the stroke of midnight, All Things Digital will be no more," Kara Swisher wrote on her AllThingsD column. "Of course, the archives of what we have written since April of 2007 - close to 38,000 posts - will remain in the digital ether for your perusal..."
For her Thursday post, Swisher asked the crew -- Peter Kafka, Liz Gannes, and Arik Hesseldahl-- to name some of the best stories covered by the site since 2007.
Kafka listed some interesting titles published before such as "Time Inc.'s iPad Problem Is Trouble for Every Magazine Publisher" and "Why the Future of TV Won't be Here Soon."
Hesseldahl chose the likes of "That Human Vs. Machine Practice Round of "Jeopardy" Didn't End the Way You Heard It Did" and " OuchPad: Best Buy Sitting on a Pile of Unsold HP Tablets."
Gannes topped her list with "Tech's Rising Stars Push Into the Online-to-Offline Era" and "I'm So Over Oversharing: On Making Our Digital Lives More Real"
The ATD will surely be missed, at least in the meantime, as it transform into a new organization.
"Many of the ATD crew has been friends, colleagues, and competitors, some for more years than any of us want to admit. But when ATD started in 2007, it brought to the web the journalistic standards of The Wall Street Journal with the timeliness, aggressiveness, and attitude that befitted a post-print publication. It quickly became the go-to site for," wrote Steve Wildstrom in a tribute to All Things Digital. "It will be very interesting to watch what changes and what remains the same in the new ATD. Equally interesting will be what Dow-Jones plans to do to fill the giant hole left by the departures. It clearly has major plans, and has been hiring a lot of staff."
