BackFence closes its gates

Updated

An online site for small communities, BackFence, appears to have shut its doors.

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The company, which offered news, blogs, photos, and forums for a handful of medium-sized towns, had been struggling. In early Janaury, BackFence laid off many of its employees and replaced its co-founder and chief executive, Susan DeFife. We wrote about it back then and speculation grew that its days were numbered.

When reached for comment, co-founder and chief executive Mark Potts said the shutdown of the community sites was the just end of the long slide that began back then and that the site has been “pretty much running on autopilot for the last few months.”

This is an intensely competitive industry, and we’ll be writing about it more shortly.

BackFence’s site is still live, but when you visit one of the community pages, like Bethesda for example, there is a note saying that “BackFence Says Goodbye.” This is true on all the community pages.

It had raised at least $3 million from SAS Investors and Omidyar Network. Mark Potts says that the investors are considering a sale or maybe even a new infusion of cash. Josh Grotstein, of SAS, is leading the effort.

Update: Co-founder Mark Potts has responded, changes above.