May 31, 2013
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The Dark Day Has Arrived: Xanga Activates Self Destruct Sequence
The notice that Xanga may be in its last days comes as no big surprise.
With ever shrinking network traffic and ramp downs in both user participation and management involvement , I figured Xanga had the following inevitable outcomes:
1) Company gets bought by a competitor who injects new life in the aging site.
2) Xanga eventually goes out of business nicely with a orderly countdown.
3) One day without warning the site gives a “404 Not Found” internet error, never to be seen again. Gone without a trace.
At least we didn’t suffer the worst fate (#3) and they are FINALLY allowing everyone to archive their blogs without needing to upgrade to premium.
Given the fact they went with the orderly countdown path, I am surprised at the time frame since they gave no prior warning that they were in such big trouble financially. You’d think they’d give some earlier warning signs.
Based on the facts they’ve presented, their situation is pretty stark.
They need $60K in donations prior to July 15th to update to a more modern WordPress format. The new version will be a “for pay” model that charges users to host blogs.
Here are the “unspoken” MAJOR problems/issues:
1) Xanga has pretty much stayed in the 2G world as all the other blogging sites moved to 3G and beyond. Xanga hasn’t seen any significant upgrades in years. They had all that time to contemplate and come up with a plan for renewal/resurgence. Nothing happened. Now how does it happen that after all these years we fall into an immediate crisis with only six weeks to get emergency funds? Where were all the ideas/plans when time/funds were on their side…or at least, not as critical?
2) As stated in #1, Xanga had years to plan on a new course of action to avoid a time crunch, but failed to do it. If they can’t come up with a good plan over several years, how much faith is there that they will be able to solve their problems in 6 weeks plus the time it takes to update the system?
3) Xanga is in a history time warp if they think a “pay for services” blogging model is going to be successful. That business model is long dead. There are far too many competitors that don’t charge and make their money via advertising. Charging everyone will only shrink the user base further and guarantee very limited growth….the life blood of any social network site. They have basically admitted that they don’t even have enough users now to make enough from advertising to pay for the equipment and operation.
4) Since this whole problem could have been dealt with better- whose to say $60K will solve the problems? What’s the guarantee that the site won’t go down anyway? For those pledging money, I recommend you only use credit cards as that will give you more protection if you need to request a refund/chargeback.
The odds for Xanga’s continuation don’t look very promising, which is sad since its interface was unique in it being a combo blogging site and social network. Users are connected to one another in a more friendly/personal way than the more traditional sites like Blogger/WordPress. It’s pretty much “facebook” for bloggers where you can be yourself or anonymous and still find wide acceptance and recognition.
The true tragedy is if Xanga had moved the site to open source years ago enabling user id’s to map across blogging sites like the others do, they likely would have given their competitors a true run for the money and pulled in much more traffic. Most folks who leave xanga for other blogs find the other places to be void of interaction despite the greater network traffic. It’s like moving to a big city, but not knowing a soul so you may as well be in the boonies.
So the REAL question is what’s going to be available after July 15th that compares to Xanga, if anything?
In the meantime, we now have a pending HS/college graduation simulation – working on exchanging contact info for all the special people in our circles this site has brought together.
After so much time has passed, you realize that your xanga contacts are not nearly as disposable as the site itself seems to be.
Comments (14)
Exactly. They had years to come up with a plan to turn this thing around. But the truth is, the Xanga Team stopped caring.
i wonder if other similar sites have shut down completely, myspace still kinda exists.
you summed it up pretty well.
i was wondering the same thing.. if we have to pay to blog on xanga, what incentive do we have to stay if we can blog elsewhere for free?guess its time to archive my post and continue blogging on WP. i will most certainly miss the xanga community as you said, there’s none like it.
@Soapie - ::sigh:: sad but true. guess I’ll meet you on wordpress! lol
Even though I’m not really around here anymore, Xanga’s demise does make me very sad! Like you, I don’t really see how a “pay for services” set-up is going to work when there are so many free services out there!
Xanga has had crises b4. At first I thought this was a sales pitch to get $48 but now i’m not sure. BTW how exactly does archiving work?
@coolmonkey - True that. The “rescue plan” sure seems spur of the moment rather than well thought out. If they can’t get enough folks when the site is free, how is moving to charging fees a solution?
@rxglasshalffull - I believe so – if the servers go, the site goes.
@Soapie - Hopefully if xanga doesn’t make it, then someone else will recognize an opportunity and create an updated xanga-like blogging site that can compete in the modern era.
Oh! A lot of the social networking services have had real problems trying to figure out how to make things work over the years – and it seems like xanga has figured out how to make the things work longer than most others. Its easy to be critical – and spout how things could have been better if only… If they had just done things this way or that way… Personally, to me, its worth it to figure out what the next xanga might look like. If it sucks, then it sucks – and I find that out. It doesn’t cost much to find out. But if you already don’t like xanga – then you probably won’t like what’s next either – so – good luck!
@joooolie - Yeah, now I need to figure out where to land! And you need to update the “renter from hell” saga. =)
@TheCheshireGrins - It’s funny – the writing was on the wall that this might happen, but I always hoped they would be bought out rather than needing to shut down. Makes you wonder why they didn’t convert to opensource years ago.
@spooner_street - This one looks pretty serious since they’ve already given a pending shut down date. Once you click on the archiving request button, it takes about a day for the zip files to be created and made available to download.
@Donkey_Guy_10 - I would respectfully disagree with the notion that Xanga has been figuring how things work over time. Their network traffic has been steadily dying off month after month, year after year. This has been an ongoing problem that was never properly addressed. If they were on the ball, we certainly would have gotten longer than a six week “make or break” notice with essentially a gun to everyone’s head to either pay up or else.
I’ve been here since 2005, so it goes without saying that I’m a devoted xanga user- but the reality of the situation is if they couldn’t bring in enough people when they were offering a “free” product to survive, how are they going to fare with a charge model against all the modern competition?
@SoullFire - to answer your question – why not just find out? It’s not going to cost much to do so! 13 cents a day! And if you are right, you will be able to gloat all the way to your next social networking site – if you can find a decent one!
@Donkey_Guy_10 - Why would I gloat on Xanga’s demise? I would miss it just like everyone else. However, I am a realist, and the reality of the situation has the odds stacked against any sustained survival if they pursue a solely fee based model. The key to survival is getting new users, and that will be a very tough sell in the face of all the other free sites out there. It will make their bad situation of shrinking traffic that much worse. They should at least offer a free model to let users do a test drive. Xanga is not likely to survive just on current users alone
I will be among the first to happily admit I was wrong if they can pull it off, but history of past blogging sites says they have a tough row to hoe.
You said: “Most folks who leave xanga for other
blogs find the other places to be void of interaction despite the
greater network traffic. It’s like moving to a big city, but not knowing
a soul so you may as well be in the boonies.”
You hit it on the nose.
I only discovered this hen I logged on today and saw your mass message! I totally envisioned scenario 3. It truly feels like the end of the world, despite the fact I study come here anymore. On the other hand I don’t care for most “friends” on Facebook, and spend way too much time there. I hate to think I have somewhat contributed to Xanga’s demise.