The new July 31st deadline date leaves us with two weeks remaining of the pledge drive.

Current stats are 587 donors and a pledge level of about $41.5K

Health of the pledge drive is fairly decent. The pledge drive hit the 50% market when 50% of the time was remaining. The additional two weeks added to the pledge drive puts the current 6 week mark at the 75% time spent level.

$41.5K/$60K x 100 = ~69.2%

 

To be at the 75% level would require the pledge drive amount to be at $45K. So being just $3.5k off isn’t bad especially if the heavy hitter donors haven’t stepped in yet.

 

We were supposed to be getting a look at “Xanga 2.0″ mock ups and a software app/checker to determine which blogs would be moving, but we’re still waiting on those items.

Since the schedule is sliding, I wonder how “hard” the deadline date is? Guess we’ll be finding out in two more weeks…

 

 

When people I talk to IRL find I actively trade, I often get the “Teach me to trade!” as one of the responses. The feeling comes across that I could sit down with someone and and after a session of explaining all the “secrets”, they’d be newly minted traders immediately able to conquer the markets- like there’s a special “gimmick”  to be made aware of that will make mastering trading a snap.

Truth is, like most major tasks one sets out to master, it requires an iterative process where you go from a larger “generic” plan and work it down to the specific details necessary to implement it.

 

For example, the recipe for generating wealth can be summarized by the following:

1) Find a good paying job

2) Save more than you spend

3) Invest your savings

 

Sounds simple on the surface level, but as they say, the devil’s in the details. Each step breaks down into multiple questions, which in turn generate more sub-steps:

1) Find a good paying job

a) What jobs are available?

a1) Determine list of available jobs

 

b) What are their qualifications?

b1) Do you qualify for the job?

b2) Is advance education needed?

b2a) What school to go to?

 

…and so on, and so forth. So those three simple sounding steps can quickly morph into quite a complex and detailed set of tasks as you start formulating a plan of action. It’s clear that attempting to implement that plan will require dedicated time and effort to keep breaking down the steps until you arrive at the specific actions to carry out.

There will also be some “missteps”, where you proceed on your best guess with the information you have, but it turns out that move was a mistake- requiring you to backtrack a bit. As you proceed, other steps will also become apparent, enabling you to develop further plan details.

So the question to carrying out this plan becomes are you willing work through the process of fleshing out all the steps of the general plan in order to create a specific plan?

It can feel daunting when you think about all the steps involved, but if you just take it a step at a time instead on trying to focus on everything, the plan feels much easier to implement.

 

 

Learning to trade well uses the same process- starting with a general simplified plan, then adding more sub steps and details to get it to the point of execution.

Of course trading presents a higher level of difficulty because there is a flood of uncertainty and seemingly random market behavior. The initial steps may look something like this:

 

1) Determine generalized market behavior

1a) When is it more likely to rise?

1b) When is it more likely to fall?

 

The complex/unknown nature of the market can make even forming the initial steps a challenging effort.

One potential trading pitfall is coming up with an inaccurate simplified plan from the start, as the resulting detailed plan would be doomed from the start.

Fleshing out the following steps after the simplified steps are created can also be difficult due to the amount of market variables at your disposal. However, once you start moving down a path, creating successive steps become less difficult over time as you figure out what works and what doesn’t. The key is to be disciplined and systematic and persevere through the whole process as you develop greater and greater step details trying to implement your plan. Being systematic and disciplined is crucial to keep from getting bogged down. If a certain planned path doesn’t work, you want to be able to discard it without having it repeated, while keeping the parts of the plan that work. Otherwise, one can keep running in circles, a fate which happens to many potential traders.

The magic part about putting your brain to work is that even the most complex tasks can be broken down to a simplified and achievable step by step process, as long as you’re committed to see it through.

 

 

 

I mentioned the existence of an earlier “Soulfire” whose blogging career here began and ended a few years before I started. I also mentioned another “Soulfire”, “XxSoulfirexX”, that was on friends lock. Don’t know either of those two….

But there is yet another “Soullfire” – “SoullfireII” to be exact, whom I “do” know. 

 

An evil twin from a parallel universe? A very unoriginal blogger? My back up copy of this blog in case of a system crash?

 

Answer: None of the above…

 

It’s another site I have. It’s not a “secret site” as I’ve mentioned it a few times over the years- easy to miss over an influx of business/trading posts.

It’s intent was to be the yin to “Soullfire’s” yang. Whereas Soullfire was business heavy, SoullfireII was intended to be a bit more personable.

The idea was when writing on Soullfire, I’d try to be more general since it’s an open blog and I have no idea whose reading. Worse case scenario- office peeps know my alias and have been secretly reading for years. That’s why there were never any specific work related gripes, haha. Not that SoullfireII is all emo and stuff- that’s just not my style. Just less generic.

Of course time being limited, Soullfire dominated most of my blogging time and not as much went to SoullfireII. As a matter of fact, SoullfireII got so little attention, that I never upgraded it when Xanga offered the “new at the time” themes page format. So it’s like looking into the past…

 

 

With time winding down on Xanga 1.0 and the “edict” that non premium accounts will likely be erased, it made me think of all those with alternate blogs that will also be getting the axe.

 

Don’t forget to backup/archive all your blogs – including your “secret” ones, haha.

 

 

Thanks to the eagle eyes of @cagey, I was alerted to the fact that the Xanga Crowdhoster Pledge Drive Page has been updated-

 

It no longer has an “end date” of July 15th, the new date has been moved to July 31.

 

This was close to my speculated scenario #1 – Xanga extending the pledge drive deadline.

 

So while that’s promising news that things are still happening behind the scenes, it clearly shows a lack of coordination from the business side of things.

One would expect an announcement/update to be made BEFORE the dates were changed, not the other way around.

 

Since another week has passed by with no further updates, which is VERY surprising considering we are going into the final week of the pledge drive. I think I’ll do what business and news media LOVE to do when in situations like this: speculate on possible outcomes based on available info, haha.

 

Okay, here’s the latest info:

1) Pledge drive at ~ $37,400 with 478 backers

That amount may appear to be “anemic” but it’s really not so bad going into the final week. The last week is similar to the first in getting a flurry of activity and we are definitely in striking distance with just a few big gun donors if they show up, and this is the most likely time for such a move.

That was the “good” news. Now onto the less promising and cloudy info…..

2) A mass “private messaging” mail has STILL not been sent out.

I find it both funny and sad that almost everyday I see someone on Xanga express either shocked surprise or disbelief that Xanga may be closing down for good, or complete ignorance of the fact.

Just yesterday I asked one of the main moderators/contributors on an ish site what their plans were if Xanga goes down. Their response was basically “I didn’t hear anything about that!” You look around the site and everything looks like it’s just another day on Xanga- no priority placed warnings or splash pages of the current situation of any kind. So all those who don’t visit the front page or know to look in the bottom corner for news from Xanga, they are completely oblivious to the whole shut down crisis.

3) We were told there would be a software app or notification on which blogs would be transferred over and which would not – still waiting…

4) We were told there would be mock ups of Xanga 2.0 to see – - still waiting…

 

These are things that normally would NOT be held up for the final week of a pledge drive and shutdown deadline. It takes time for people to react to new information and you want to give them that time to soak it in and answer any questions they may have. 

With only a week left, there’s not much time for anything – out of all the weeks – the last week should have been the “silent run” week with everything put in place earlier.

 

All these delayed activities (if they even happen) point to an ongoing problem of time management. Engineers can be notorious for needing more time than estimated, but the business folks know how critical deadline dates are and prod them on. Keeping the customer informed of any delays as early as possible is critical to keep positive momentum going. It’s clear the business minded side of the pledge drive is MIA.

#2, #3, and #4 are NOT small things, and the fact that these are still “TBD” are red flags something isn’t right.

 

It’s now time to speculate on possible outcomes for July 15th:

 

1) The pledge drive ends and Xanga renews/extends it if the goal hasn’t been met.

Odds: Not likely. John said on the phone interview that the date is “hard coded”. Plus it weakens the credibility of the company when they set hard dates, then fail to act on them- especially without any advance notice. The lease where their servers are is expiring, which would limit any extension.

2) The pledge drive gets some “Hail Mary” big donations at the end to pull through and make the goal.

Odds: Possible. This would explain the seemingly “lackadaisical” response from Xanga to date if they knew they had some big gun donors that were going to step in during the last week. However, if this is the case, we should start to see some big moves no later than Wednesday- the mid point of the final week. This translates to being at least in the mid to upper $40k’s by that time. 

3) The pledge drive fails and Xanga closes down.

Odds: Also possible. This scenario should enrage all the “super supporters” who have been working a storm and spending much of their time trying to raise funds. Few if any would be willing to argue against the fact that Xanga has been pretty quiet this whole time and could have done much more to help their own cause.

This begs the question, did they even intend to have a “Xanga 2.0″, or was this just going through the motions of just wanting to look like they cared as some have speculated earlier? If the latter, that would be even more of a reason for super supporters to be enraged since the cause was lost and their efforts wasted from the very beginning.

4) The pledge drive fails, and Xanga…doesn’t close and continues working on Xanga 2.0.

Odds: Not likely. The pledge drive was to fund the move from where their servers were located and launch Xanga 2.0. If that were possible without the pledge drive, then why would they hold one in the first place?

 

So it looks like scenario #2 and #3 are the most likely. For the sake of all the super supporters as well as all those who have no idea of what the current situation is, I hope it winds up being scenario #2. A #3 outcome would not only be disastrous for all the uninformed users who stand to lose their entire work, but a sad and dark ending on Xanga and the reputation of those running Xanga. It would be a sad summary of all the problems that have plagued Xanga these last years of its once bright life. Definitely not a good note to end on.

Now some folks may get upset that I’m bringing up all these negative aspects instead of just “thinking positive thoughts”, but those folks likely don’t understand how businesses work. The negative aspects HAVE to be addressed so people can make intelligent decisions on what to do.

For EVERY company that has failed, there have been a set of ardent supporters who believed in that company no matter what- then express shock and anger when that “faith” didn’t pan out and the company failed anyway. A Company in trouble will rarely tell you when they are on the way out – just look at all the Wall Street and mortgage Banks during the 2008/2009 melt down. The repeated mantra was “Everything is fine, we have things under control…” right up until the point they declared bankruptcy/insolvency and were liquidated.

I don’t look at things from a “faith” based perspective when it comes to business….and neither should anyone.

Into the final stretch we go…

 

After doing some research on where to move when Xanga 1.0 ends, I selected WordPress. I thought I’d share my review of the free alternative websites and what I thought were their pros/cons.

Note: Like all reviews, take with a grain of salt since I’m basing it on “my” preferences, which may differ from yours. This review is also not meant to be super complete or thorough since I haven’t taken the time to examine every aspect/feature of every alternative site.

All right here we go…

 

First up is the main site that all other sites are being compared to: Venerable Xanga 1.0!

 

Xanga 1.0

Pros: The community experience is bar none one of the best there is for any blogging site. The ease in which you can meet new people and receive feedback, and yet doesn’t require your life to be under a microscope (cough Facebook) beats anything I’ve seen out there to date. This is a main reason why so many people who already have moved to and tried more modern alternative blogs remain faithful to Xanga and keep returning through the years. It manages to mix the level of privacy and social networking at just the right amount.

Here’s how it usually works. Someone leaves Xanga and goes to an alternative blogging site. They are pleased with the more modern features/interfaces, but quickly see something important is “missing” when their feedback drops to few responses, if any. Over time, the most likely things to happen are:

1) They abandon/neglect their new blog and resume blogging on Xanga

2) They “dual blog”, continuing to post on Xanga while updating their alternative blog as well

3) They stay on the new blog and eventually stop blogging altogether – likely due to lack of feedback/interaction.

Of course there are cases where a person relocates and reestablishes a high following/feedback base, as well as those who are content to proclaim their message regardless of the amount of feedback received. But as a general rule, Xanga gives you social interaction and feedback far easier than on most other sites. Building up a sizable social base on other sites requires more action on your part to actively seek out and mingle with new folks to help get your site noticed in the process. With Xanga that process seems to form more naturally/organically. Not that there aren’t “loner” Xangan’s who don’t receive any interaction/feedback, but efforts at being social pay back higher response dividends than at other sites based on my experience/observations.

I think one key is Xanga’s front page, and later on their “ish” sites, which creates a forum where people can chime in and get to know each other. It gives Xanga the “university” feel – where people of all backgrounds/majors can meet and mingle sharing their thoughts, feelings, opinions, and ideas. The other more modernized sites lack this and as a result are more like a “workplace” or “large apartment complex” feel- where most of the people you tend to meet are like minded and less diverse in thought. It’s also less “social” and feels like more of a “professional” environment. You likely have to put in a lot more work and effort to get more of a social environment setting.

Extra goodies are friends-lock, private messaging, private/protected posts, etc…

The bottom line is Xanga is relatively easy to learn, comfortable, and all it takes is one rec from a socially active person to bring a host of traffic to your site.

 

Cons: While it has a very big list of pros, there are some significant cons as well. First and foremost is the ever decreasing net traffic on the site:

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/xanga.com#trafficstats

Site is ranked at 4797 in US, 5866 Globally. It’s far down the scale relative to the more popular sites, which translates into far less traffic, or people using the site. This does reduce the community experience as your posts have fewer and fewer people available to see them. In any blogging site, your first interaction zone is within the blogging site community itself, and then other blogging sites. So if the primary community has less overall traffic, the impact is felt much more.

A quick look at the front page Top Blogs (Formally called “Featured”) section tells the tale. Back in the day, making the Top Blogs list could land you anywhere from 1500 – 5000+ views easily and well over 100 comments. If you were an unknown, it was your chance to shine in the spotlight. It truly felt like a big accomplishment that your blog was deemed worthy enough to make the list. These days, blogs can make the list and leave with just a handful of views and comments. In addition, some of the blogs that do show have questionable content that may not be suitable for all age groups. Of course this is due to the automatic choosing algorithm now in place, but the lower net traffic can result in just about any blog getting listed with just a few views or comments.

On the flip side, Xanga lost some of the problems a super high traffic community site can have – unnecessary drama with flame wars aplenty. Let’s start with “Top Blogs”  – there were numerous complaints that Top Blogs was locked up by certain cliques that would appear on the list again and again, shutting out newcomers. To address that problem they came up with the “algorithm” instead of manually selected blogs which helped. Then you have the folks with a “jillion” friends who get into fights with others with a “jillion” friends, resulting in epic flame wars as people join sides and defend their friend. Those kind of fights drove folks away  from Xanga to other sites as well. Of course, this is a problem for any community site – the “Xanga wars” of yesterday have relocated to the “Facebook wars” of today.

Another big problem is the lack of more modern features. They are still in 2G mode in a world that has moved to 3.5G. It’s harder to make use of video/audio due to compatibility issues with newer formats. Other blogging sites can’t easily connect to exchange blogs.

Xanga 2.0 should solve the “obsolete” problem, but is likely to exacerbate the net traffic problem with the new pay wall.

 

Livejournal

Pros: This site has a good set of community related features and interaction, and also a front page listing top blogs. Net traffic is also high:

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/livejournal.com#trafficstats

Livejournal is globally ranked #160, US rank is 381

Cons: While the global traffic is at #160, its top blogging country is Russia, where it’s ranked #13. This means that while it’s popular, if you’re a US blogger, don’t expect the majority of blogs to be US or North American centric. I like to test a site out by doing a search for day traders or trading in general, and just about all the hits are sites in Russia, in blogs written in Russian.  There are US “community enclaves”, but you should check to see if it’s a group that shares your interests. This site has fallen out of favor in the US, but has maintained a large following globally.

There also seems to be little in the way of more modern blogging options and customizations. It’s interface feels less advanced than Xanga’s. I’m not a fan of its look and feel.

 

Blogspot

Pros: More modern blogging features and a high US/Global net traffic ranking:

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/blogspot.com#trafficstats

Ranked #12 Globally, #13 in US.

Also easy to learn and start blogging shortly after signing up.

Cons: Not natively social. No community involvement to speak of. Each blog is a world unto it’s own. You typically have to be far more active in seeking out and mingling with other blogs to build a following. Otherwise, not uncommon to get very little commenting/social interaction.

 

Combo Pro & Con: They are combining Blogspot with Google Plus to provide the missing “community” – that’s the pro. The “con” is you have to join Google plus for it- a community dictated on Google’s privacy terms. Even with Plus, social functionality still lags behind Xanga.

 

Blogster

Pros: Nice community feel. Has a comforting feel very similar to Xanga. Also similar Xanga-like functionality such as private messaging and friends lock.

Cons: Despite the excellent community set up and similar features to Xanga, it also suffers from the same problems such as low net traffic, only on a much greater scale:

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/blogster.com#trafficstats

Global rank is 18,088 That makes Xanga’s 5866 ranking look like a metropolis in comparison. Rank is even worse for US users with a ranking of 28,601. Definitely not good if one is seeking increased interaction and a wider audience. This also portends future problems. If Xanga is having money issues with ad revenue, then the problems for Blogster must be significantly worse with its far lower traffic numbers.

Also, since they are not high ranked in the US, the site will lean towards outside of North America topics.

 

Tumblr

Pros: Popular and high traffic blogging site:

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/tumblr.com#trafficstats

Global rank: 28, US rank: 18

It has some community features to help with folks finding your site.

 

Cons: This isn’t really a full blogging site, but more of a micro blogging site. The focus is more on shorter journals and visual media rather than writing at length. Comments aren’t native to the site, but can be installed via Disqus. You can still create long written blogs here, but the site really isn’t built for that type of publishing.

A pet peeve of mine is when you go to your homepage, you get to see other Tumblr posts in addition to the ones you’re following (if any), following someone is the equivalent to subscribing to them as you will see all of their blogs. I wish there were a separate “Read Subscriptions” button instead. I’m not sure how the additional posts (from those you’re not following) that show up get chosen. Granted I just recently signed up to check it out, so I may not be aware of all the ins and outs of operation that could solve this issue.

 

Hubpages

Pros: Nice community site. Lots of publishing features/plug ins. Opportunity to get paid for your writing. Good traffic volume:

 

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/hubpages.com#trafficstats

Global rank: 485, US rank: 442

 

Blog posts written here are called “Hubs”, and the site is specially geared to spread traffic to everyone’s site. Your blog hub (post) will show links to similar posts written by others. It’s similar to Xanga’s related post feature, except that the related posts will be from others bloggers.

They also have a “Hub of the day” (HOTD) to feature top blog posts.

Community seems actively involved in reading/critiquing other posts. Pay for writing I’m told is variable and is estimated to be from 10 cents to a dollar per post per month on average.

Con: They want formal informative blog posts only. This isn’t a personal blogging site. So if you want to write in a general way, such as a restaurant “foodie” review, how-to guide, travel info, etc…, this is a site with potential. However, its not a good site for more personal entries like talking about one’s daily activities or feelings and what not. This would make it a good formal or secondary blog but not a general purpose one.

 

WordPress

Pros:  High traffic site with good publishing tools as well as some nice community features.

 

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wordpress.com#trafficstats

 

Global rank: 25, US Rank: 32

 

I was pleasantly surprised with the amount of community features presented. Beyond the “freshly pressed” blogs list, under “Blog Admin”, you have a Top Blogs, Top Posts, and Latest tabs- very Xanga-like! It also has a real-time comment notifier to let you know if anyone comments on any of your blogs – a very nice feature to have.

Cons: It aint Xanga. Despite the community features, there is still the issue of social interaction and response to ones blog posts. Having a Top Blogs and Top Posts list hidden in the Blog Admin section rather than on the front page minimizes its community help. Building up a reader following still has to be done actively and with greater effort than on Xanga. Many blogs here still receive few to no comments/feedback.

There’s also a good learning curve to get familiar with how to access and work with all the features you have available. That can scare away folks used to simpler interfaces. Takes some time to get familiar with.

 

Based on my needs, WordPress had the best mix of high traffic plus community potential to satisfy my alternative home blogging requirements. I also still have an interest in Hubpages, since I do tend to write general informative blogs, like the current one here. Perhaps I’ll make Hubpages a secondary site to the WordPress site for my formal blog posts. After all, WordPress was originally my secondary site to Xanga for formal blogs.

 

Some nice social blog search tools:

http://social-networking.findthebest.com/

http://blog-services-review.toptenreviews.com/

 

This message is for all of you who have or are making plans to relocate.

While the “free trial” option has not been presented and the only guaranteed blog transfers are for those who pay the new annual fee or are a current or former premium member, there is a way to still get those things without being in those groups.

That way is through using your available Xanga “credits”. You can still purchase premium using your credits: 1 month for 4000 credits, and 6 months for 15000 credits. We are now in July, so this is the time to make use of your credits if you have them. I tried it out, and it works fine.

In lieu of credits, 1 month of premium is $4, so that is another way to ensure your blog transfers if you don’t already qualify, which is really similar to my proposed “Save Free Xanga Plan”, which has them charging folks a nominal fee to keep their blogs online.

Put those extra credits to work!

 

Note: Since We still have no idea if Xanga 2.0 will be a reality, if you go for the “cash” option, it’s best not to go past $4, since that is what you’ll be standing to lose if Xanga terminates.

 

 

 

 

Someone’s well meaning but ill informed mother signed her son up for Facebook, using my email instead of whatever his was supposed to be. I know this because I got an intro message from Facebook with a message from her telling me what she did.

Facebook was asking me to click on a link to confirm my membership which I did not do, thinking that would take care of things. It didn’t.

As a result of this mistaken “sign-up” I keep receiving email notifications of “friend” requests,notifications, confirmations, etc…, along with anniversary, b-day, “friends of friends I may know” updates, and so on and so forth ad nauseam.

I never joined Facebook due to identity theft concerns (working in IT security makes you extra aware/sensitive of these threats), but it sure seems annoying to be getting “updates” from all these folks. This is why we have reunions and meet ups people – so we can catch up the old fashioned way instead of putting it all out there on a real-time basis.

 

Does anyone know of a way to break a false email link in such a circumstance?

 

Will be:

soullfire.wordpress.com

 

I created that site a ways back along with a Blogspot location. My vision at the time was to create “specialty focused” blogs with:

1) Blogspot being my trading blog where I’d list my trade related posts.

2) WordPress would be where I’d post my more general finance related blogs.

3) Xanga would be my all purpose blog that would cover everything.

 

The plan was to copy and move the trading posts from Xanga to Blogspot and my finance blogs would be copied to WordPress. Over time however, I became less motivated moving stuff over since I was becoming more active in my trading which is time consuming and I wasn’t getting much in the way of feedback over there anyway, so  updates to those sites happened less frequently, if at all.

So when it became clear I needed to relocate my Xanga all purpose blog, the two sites were clear options, but I wanted to check out the other blogging sites before making a decision- the results of my search and the reason I choose WordPress will be in a following post.

The WordPress site was pretty much neglected for a few years, and during that time they added some upgrades, so I’ve been at work doing some housekeeping and modernizing my format to make it more my comfy general blog.

 

It’s still a work in progress at the moment…

 

 

 

Two songs I’ve recently discovered…

 

Capital Cities – Safe and Sound

Along with the song, I like the video special effects showing the merging of different times in history of dance styles.

 

 

 

Alicia Keys – Girl on Fire

 

Great vocals, great beat. Reminds me of and dedicated to the women bloggers I know who are working hard and doing what it takes to make things happen! Burn on!