Microsoft has confirmed it will be shutting down its" Popfly tool on August 24, 2009.
In a message to the Popfly blog company official John Montgomery confirmed "unfortunately, on August 24, 2009 the Popfly service will be discontinued and all sites, references, and resources will be taken down. At that time, your access to your Popfly account, including any games and mashups that you have created, will be discontinued."
Popfly originally launched publicly as a beta service in October 2007. The web service was originally introduced for users to create both Windows Vista Sidebar gadgets and Windows Live gadgets. The tool was designed to help non-programmers in creating, sharing, and embedding mashups of content, feeds, web pages and gadgets.
A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to TechFlash that the tool was being discontinued due to the current economic climate, "like many companies, the economic situation has caused us refocus and to reevaluate our priorities; while successful and popular, Popfly is not part of our refocused strategy."
Microsoft is advising Popfly users to visit Microsoft Web Platform Installer to continue web applications development, XNA for Xbox developement and Microsoft"s Visual Studio site for Windows development.