The third is that , despite what they ' ve said , they actually do have at least a partial userless database backup , and they ' re waiting for a sufficiently trustworthy successor to arise before they privately slip them the DB . Publicly releasing their database immediately would result in a clusterfuck of copycat sites all just importing the parts of the DB they can get their hands on and trying to be the next wcd on that alone . This is the one I want to be the case , but something in my gut tells me it ' s not likely . I actually think this is indeed the case . If my interpretation is correct , they pretty much announced it in the goodbye tweet . We can offer no guarantee of further communication at this time . What happens next is in your hands .