Astrid to close its doors for good on August 5th

Former Vator Splash People's Choice Award winner was bought by Yahoo in May

Yahoo has been buying up just about every start up it can get its hands on these days (the other day it bought email and address book management app Xobni, its 14th start up acquisition since this past fall). And the majority of these purchases have been acqui-hires, meaning that they are being shut down so the employees can use their expertise to improve Yahoo's own products.

That included personalized recommendation service Jybe; Stamped, the Justin Bieber-backed mobile app that lets users “stamp” and share their favorite restaurants, movies, books, and music; and location discovery app Alike, which Yahoo purchased in February.

Now you can add Astrid, a productivity app which helps people manage lists, which Yahoo  scooped up in May, to the list of companies Yahoo is shutting down.

When it was first announced that Astrid has been purchased, its fate was left unclear. In a blog post from CEO Jon Paris, in which he announced the news, it was revealed that the service would continue to operate for 90 days, but without any new users. Did that mean that it would be going away after 90 days, or did it need that time to transition to being part of the Yahoo family?

"Over the next 90 days, Astrid will continue to work as is, and we will no longer be accepting new premium subscriptions. To make future changes as easy as possible, we’ll be in touch with users shortly to share how to download data," Paris wrote.

The answer to that question was finally made clear in an e-mail that was sent out to Astrid users on Saturday, in which Paris revealed that Astrid will closing on August 5th. That gives users less a month to export their data, which they can do by going to astrid.com/home/export.

Paris also recommended to Astrid users that they use other services, such as Wrike, Wunderlist, Sandglaz, or Any.do, instead.

"When we built Astrid, we sought to help as many people as possible become happier, healthier and more productive – and we certainly hope we helped you. Thank you again for your support," wrote Paris.

San Francisco-based Astrid started in 2011, first getting incubated inside of AngelPad, and then raising just over $500,000 from Google Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners. Astrid was also a People's Choice Award winner at our Vator Splash event in February 2012. 

Here is the letter from Paris to Astrid users in full:

"First off, we want to sincerely thank you for being an Astrid user over the years. Your support every step of the way has meant the world to us. As of August 5, 2013, we will be closing the Astrid service.

We know that a transition can be tough, but we want to make it as easy as possible for you. Please go to this link: astrid.com/home/export to download your data.

Once you have your data, we recommend you check out one of these applications. They will allow you to easily import your data, so you can pick up where you left off: Wrike, Wunderlist, Sandglaz, and Any.do.

When we built Astrid, we sought to help as many people as possible become happier, healthier and more productive – and we certainly hope we helped you. Thank you again for your support.

Best regards,

Jon Paris & the Astrid Team"

(Image source: https://www.emedco.com)