Observant readers will note that I spell my username “Soullfire”, with two L’s instead of one. There’s a simple reason for that- when I was setting up my username I tried the spelling with one “L” and was notified that it wasn’t available, so I had to be a little creative.

I eventually found the other “Soulfire’s” site, but it was abandoned over three years before I came on the scene and signed up.

The “1 L” @Soulfire is a “she” and curiously enough, posted political, government, business, and office rants that were somewhat similar to my own regarding some of those topics. Her language was a bit more, um, raw than mine at times, haha. Still, a casual reader could easily confuse us were it not for the lack of updates of that site.

There have been a few occasions where someone looking for my site landed on her site instead, then told me about it later. I’m pretty sure early member Xangan’s looking for her landed on my site instead.

She had some interesting things to say – it’s a shame her blog, like so many others, went inactive.

 

This is why Xanga’s current plan of eliminating all non premium blogs and leaving folks with just an empty site is a TERRIBLE idea in my opinion. It’s fun browsing older non active sites to see what others were thinking during the time. Why eliminate all those quality blogs and memories of past users when they serve to attract new readers?

Oh, there was also yet another Soulfire, “XxSoulFirexX”, but that one is on friends-lock. Since “Friends Lock” didn’t exist back in “Soulfire’s” time, this xXSoulFireXx must be a newer incarnation.

 

 

Domino’s in the UK is experimenting with pizza delivery by drone!

 

 

 

Ever since Xanga announced that they may be shutting down July 15th, that has taken center stage in my blogging focus and attention. They so “kindly” let everyone know that if they don’t make their pledge drive goals in six weeks, the site will be closing. Furthermore, if they manage to make the pledge amount, they will relaunch with a new “pay only” business model.

Current information states that anyone not buying a “new version membership” in the form of a minimum $48 pledge and/or not currently having premium level status will lose all their past blogs and will have to manually re-upload them if they wish to continue (once they’ve paid the $48/yr new dues of course).

In any case, since I don’t feel compelled to pay to blog when there are so many free options, especially when the request comes in the form of a “threat” (pay us or else we will close and take your blogs with us!!), I don’t see myself continuing on this site.

Frankly, I don’t see how they would expect a “pay us now for a new version you haven’t seen or tried yet” plan to go over well, but enough of that here, that will be the topic of another blog.

Current tasks now include looking for a new blogging site. I haven’t made up my mind yet, but WordPress is one of the front runners- will update once I decide.

 

In the remaining time before the “do or die” date of July 15, I’ve decided to make some big changes of my own. The most prevalent questions I’ve gotten since starting this blog was:

 

1) “Why don’t you blog about other things besides business/trading??”

2) “How come your blogs are not more personal?”

 

I’ve blogged about other more personal topics occasionally, but the focus has always been on trying to master trading/investing. It was my primary reason to start a blog. The last couple of years has seen my focus ramped up even more so even a greater percentage of my blogs have been on trading.

The reason for the focus was/is I desire to be able to trade for a living because like most of us, corporate office life doesn’t thrill me. I thought having a blog to write about my success/failures would help with my progress.

Going forward, with the Xanga clock ticking down, I’ve decided to change things up and open my blogging to PRIMARILY OTHER SUBJECTS. That’s right, my blogs may not be as dry/boring as usual, haha.

There have been blogs I’ve always been meaning to write if I had the time, and with time running short, this is the perfect opportunity to do it.

There are still one or two trading tropics I want to address, plus a few rage/rants against Wall Street arrogance/corruption - but expect to see less of that and more of other things you wouldn’t expect from “Mr. Business”.

 

 

Xanga has provided info for a Q & A session provided here: Link

 

In particular, I noticed this response to a question:

 

 

In other words, all non paying and non premium members will see all their blog posts go “bye bye” in Xanga 2.0. All that will remain will be the much smaller subset of blogs from paid/premium users.

My questions to that are:

1) Has the Xanga team considered that by erasing (not transferring over) all non paying /non premium blogs leaving the only option of the hassle of manually reimporting, they are making it VERY easy for these folks to just walk away and start fresh somewhere else?

Why would anyone be so motivated to now have the hassle of trying to manually reimport their blogs, and have to “pay” for this privilege? They are probably thinking this will be an incentive for people to start paying before the deadline, and it may work for some, but they stand to lose a ton of folks in the process. How is this building a community? How are people going to be persuaded to return to a place where the landscape has been wiped clean of the blogs of so many of their friends?

2) Have they considered the consequences of destroying so much of Xanga’s history as well as how it will affect the morale of current users?

 

This is my thought process – if I don’t pay, Xanga will be erasing all my blogs and I will have to manually reimport or just start over again. Furthermore, there is NO guarantee that the new version of Xanga will survive so I could wind up losing my posted blogs all over again. Let’s see – what’s my motivation to remain also knowing that many of the folks I subscribed to are no longer there?

 

I’m not sure what Xanga is thinking. Blogs = content, which is a draw for other users. How is eliminating the bulk of their user content a good business move?  How is the sense of “community” going to be fostered and grown when they are basically removing the homes and paving over so much of the old neighborhood?

Too bad all of the “non paying” folks who could have helped quite a bit in “evangelizing” – spreading the word and attracting users…you know “grass roots style”, will no longer be around.

 

I really hope they rethink their strategy before following through with this plan. The message sent whether intended or not is being a loyal user after all these years counts for nothing, but they somehow expect “new” users to suddenly be interested and pay to join despite all the free options available.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Okay, so anyone who is familiar with measuring site traffic and popularity knows that Xanga has been in decline for some time. Even if you didn’t measure site traffic, it would be apparent looking at your subscription and friend lists to see how many people stopped blogging or moved on to other sites.

There have been many new blogging and social network sites introduced since Xanga first appeared with the top contenders today being Blogger, WordPress, Facebook, Tumblr, etc. Many folks just moved on to the next new and popular thing.

Now here comes the paradox set up:

Xanga has been losing market share for years due to its aging interface and features compared to the new sites. But just as sure as Xanga is aging, it also provides a blogging sense of community better than any other site out there, from the oldest to the newest. That’s the 1st paradox and is the primary reason why so many people return to Xanga or continue to use their services.

The 2nd paradox is the bigger one – even though most would agree the “Xanga blogging community experience” is better than anything else on the market today, the company has been unable to successfully market its best feature to their advantage….leading to the current financial crisis.

I’m sure a big reason for this was the aging design and interface compared to its blog competitors. The “community feel” isn’t something that can be easily demonstrated to prospective new users compared to all the latest bells and whistles.

I think Xanga’s biggest “sin” was not converting years ago to a more updated format or at the very least, updating the user log in software to enable it to connect across multiple platforms like the other blogging sites, so a Blogger/Wordpress user could leave comments on Xanga without needing to create a new Xanga account. Without this upgrade, Xanga became an enclave, where only Xanga users could easily comment on Xanga, blowing the opportunity to easily introduce new people to the site as well as encouraging users to stay. As a result most folks went to the newer sites without ever needing to visit an aging site like Xanga.

So the question is what can Xanga do now to save itself? Xanga’s current plan is to convert to a more modern format- that’s good. They also intend to eliminate “free” blogging – that’s not so good.

In a world where other blogging sites offer free blogging, charging people for similar services seems like a suicidal move. Yes, you will get some current users that are devoted enough to pay, but it will be a hard sell for newcomers given that they have free alternatives.  Blogging sites become popular by the quality of their content. Without an influx of new blogs, there will be less to attract newcomers, and how long can a blogging site survive on a shrinking list of users?

I would think Xanga could offer a basic free blog like everyone else and then start charging for the special features it has-

1) Want friends lock? That’s extra.

2) Want private messaging? Extra.

3) Chat feature? Ditto.

That would let people blog and those who wish to make their content private would have to pay a small fee, which could add up when multiplied by all the users requesting it. The other users posting blogs for all to see are providing marketable content for the site- making it a win-win for both Xanga and bloggers alike.

 

An even bigger approach would be to make Xanga a “blogger hosting center”, where bloggers log in to Xanga as their homebase to post to the blogging site of their choice. All the blogs from all the sites would get ranked to have a true top blogs list (I’m sure this would be a huge software project so that puts it at a long range goal).