3 Lessons Learned from Bitstrips Shutting Down

by | Jun 4, 2018

Raise your hand if you know what Bitstrips is. Never heard of it? Well, that’s okay because it shut down.

Sort of.

As one of my favorite newsletters, the Skimm, would say – Explain.

Bitstrips Story

Bitstrips was a comic service I stumbled upon a few years ago. You could create characters and make your own cartoons from their tools.

As I so often do, I dabbled with it and then abandoned it. I had fun creating the baby boomer character you see here. I used various cartoons I created for posts at this site.

Recently, Bitstrips sent me a link where I could download my cartoons. I’m not sure why I received them now.

  • Lifewire reported Bitstrips was acquired by Snapchat in 2016
  • It morphed into the app, Bitmoji
  • You can link Bitmoji to Snapchat

I decided I would take this nudge from the comic service to update the original posts where I used my cartoon character. So, you can expect a series of updates.

Three Lessons Learned

When I received Bitstrips’ notification, it reminded me of some important lessons when using tools for your business communication. I created the infographic below of 3 lessons learned.

Lesson Learned

One of the more frustrating social media efforts for me occurred with LinkedIn’s Company Page feature. Although most of what I did directed readers back to this site, I created new material as well. And I spent a long time doing it.

Guess what happened. Yep, LinkedIn ditched the whole format and replaced it with something new. Lesson learned.

  1. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. I wish I had spent less time on the Company Page and limited the details to a link to this blog.
  2. Always have a Plan B contingency. Worst case scenario happened. LinkedIn dumped the format, which wiped out all my hard work.
  3. Back up the important stuff. Although, as I said, most of the information was on this site, I wished I had backed up the original content.

How about you? Do you have any social media tools horror stories? If so, please share them in Comments.

I enjoyed Bitstrips. Stay tuned for future posts that update the old ones and share the cartoons I created there.

Infographic design: Canva credit

8 Comments

  1. Anne Wayman

    Cathy, I think I signed up for bitstrips – I too liked the idea of creating comic characters… I also remember getting quite frustrated because it was taking me more time than I thought it should… no clue what else was going on in my life at that point. If you find another create comic character site please let us know.

    A

    Reply
    • Cathy Miller

      Thanks, Anne. I love doing stuff like that so I might just look into it. I’ll keep you posted. 😉

      Reply
  2. Emily Suess

    I remember seeing Bitstips and Bitmojis quite frequently on Facebook a couple of years ago. Though I never used the site myself, I did get a chuckle out of some of the comics my friends and family were creating. I am glad to report that I don’t have any social media tools horror stories yet, but your post does remind me that I’ve got some content I want to back up. Thanks, Cathy!

    Reply
    • Cathy Miller

      Emily, you are fortunate you don’t have horror stories for the social media tools you’ve used. Of course, those wouldn’t hold a candle to your insurance horror stories, right? 😉 . Thanks for stopping by, Emily.

      Reply
  3. George Borrelli

    Is there anything like Bitstrips around (other than Bitmoji)? I LOVED Bitstrips and was super sad to see it go.

    Reply
    • Cathy Miller

      I’m sure there is but I don’t know what that would be. I’ll have to check that out. If anyone else has recommendations, let us know. I miss Bitstrips, too, George. 🙂

      Reply
    • Courtney

      Pixton offers a similar service. It has far more features, which makes it a little more difficult to use but also allows you to do quite a bit more!

      Reply
      • Cathy Miller

        Thanks for sharing the alternative, Courtney. I’ll have to check it out. 🙂

        Reply

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