Keep Experience Project open

Nearly a decade ago, we started Experience Project with a mission of harnessing social media to bring empathy and understanding to all, through the power of anonymously shared human experience. Since then, tens of millions of experiences have been shared by hundreds of millions of people. Users have gotten married, saved each other's lives, and entertained and comforted each other late into the night. Every single day, we've been privileged to see community members find connection to ideas, feelings, and people that changed their lives.

However, many important things have changed since 2006 that risk both our ideals and our ability to deliver on them. So, it is with heavy hearts that we have decided to pause this chapter in Experience Project history and regroup for the future , rather than risk our beliefs, and more importantly, our users' trust. We've struggled mightily with this decision for a long time, and pursued every reasonable alternative, but we are confident that it is the right thing to do at this time. For details on what this means for your account, please see Next Steps below. To read more about the factors leading up to this difficult decision, please continue reading here.

What does this all mean? In practical terms, this means that on April 21st at 4:00 pm PDT , we are going to be pressing "pause" on the site. At that time, we will not allow new registrations or the posting of new content, instead freezing the current library of experiences. We have built tools that will enable you toexport your contributions , or delete your account , and will leave those tools up for the foreseeable future. As it should be, what you want to do with your content is up to you. Most stories on EP are timeless, and if you leave yours up, they will undoubtedly help countless others. Over time, we hope to determine how to better realize our mission in the future.

Experience Project is a very big idea that you have made a reality. The need for it -- for empathy, for comfort, for making sure no one ever feels alone -- is as critical as ever. Thank you for being part of this journey with us, and we hope that we can say "welcome home" again in the future.