there are different philosophies on when to kill a project... and imho, this was way too quick. By way of personal example, it took us 2 years to build BizRate.com into something that could even get funded, another 5 years before it started making money as Shopzilla, and 9 years total before we had our "overnight success" -- Many points along the way we could easily have pulled the plug. Persistence / sticking to your vision is something that is sorely lacking these days. (Another more obvious example: How long did it take for Apple's design+hardware+software philosophy to strike a mainstream cord?)
Timing aside, this method of "putting a bullet in its head" (which is not even a good expression to use colloquially), was a terribly callous way to treat their current users too... Especially given the fact that for a few thousand dollars a month (max) they could have kept the system rolling in the cloud indefinitely, without investing any time in it. They then could have put out feelers to find it's users / content a new home... (For example, our new start-up chee.rs would gladly have welcomed oink users -- in fact we're working on a quick oink importer as I write this. :)
Or, even if they weren't interested in transitioning users to someone else, they could have kept things running at least until their next big idea came along to announce to their users: "Hey we've got this new great thing, come on over and now that we have it, we've decided to finally and reluctantly shutter Oink, because we hadn't seen it gain much traction. Sorry about letting you down... blah blah blah."
Much better for PR than "We put a bullet in your head and moved on... But, we hope you'll join us again for another round as soon as your headache subsides."
I wouldn't suggest you Oink your girlfriend, or Stamp your pet... they deserve better. :)
Also, the ho-hum is not a Cheer.
Finally, some people oink (wanna be critics / raters), but all people love. Cheers lowers the barrier to expressing love and appreciation publicly, and for those who do, it's a very different feeling / feedback loop than having simply rated something.
That said, Oink / Stamped are very good for ranking / rating things and as such both should give Yelp a run for it's money.
Sorry for the late reply... Cheers were designed to be public expressions of love and appreciation, for anyone, anything, anywhere. Sure they get the cheerer some attention because they are public, but that's not the primary motivation driving creation.
As such, the cheering someone elses wedding example is not really a common usecase. Unless you're cheering the couple to wish them well or something.
More common is cheering the stuff in your own life that you appreciate. Cheering your pets, loved ones, favorite apps, beautiful concepts or great design are much more common.
As you cheer things, what happens is that you reveal what you appreciate, and thus a little part of your heart, which makes it easier to connect with you (always along positive lines).
Anyway... I hope you give it a shot and let me know what you think after. Cheers! Farhad - ceo Cheerful, inc.