BlogExplosion: Death of a Giant?

Anyone who’s tried to log into Blog Explosion recently will have discovered – nothing, just a 503 message. Not even the forums are functioning now. It seems to have gone down the same road as BlogCrowd, Blogmad and Blog Soldiers.

I joined BE back in 2004/5. Looking back at my older posts I found some good friends there. Then I discovered that there was a backload of blogs waiting to be approved, which I did for two solid years. We managed to get them up to date twice during this period. Due to lack of administration the forums were inundated with all forms of very nasty spam. A dedicated team of members and I spent a lot of time posting to push the spam back; it was the only tool we had. Some people were writing on the forums that they weren’t receiving credits they had paid for. What to do?

In February 2009 we organized the writing of (real) letters to the company which owned BE. This eventually led to a new administrator being appointed. A volunteer who worked all over the site and dealt with support tickets as well as cleaning out the spam from the forums. His access was limited, but he did his best and for a little while everything was going well. Then he disappeared. I’m sure that he was banned from accessing the site for some reason.

A year later we were back to square one and the owners could not be contacted. I discovered that they weren’t paying some of their employees either. At this point some members came forward and said they would be interested in buying BE, but from who? Throughout this period surfing was difficult as the system wasn’t running properly. Someone tried to fix it but afterwards, credits weren’t allocated for surfing, the numbers to click on weren’t always there and I think this was when logging in became very touch and go too.

 In May 2010 a few of us got together and set up a new blog exchange: ExposeYourBlog!. However, I was still trying to approve the never ending backlog of blogs and keeping an eye on the forum on BE. As EYB! grew I spent less and less time trying to keep something going on BE.

A lot of our members migrated from BE. Thank you to everyone who supported BE in the past and those who support EYB! today.

 My posts on the story up until the end of 2010

Bye, bye 2010

On the whole I think that it’s a good thing that 2010 is on its way out. Looking back over my blog entries, January saw pictures of snow - December too. February is good for birthdays, Olivier and Christian are both February boys. 2010 say the hurricane Xanthia passing through. Unfortunately we drove through the village where there were several deaths quite regularly. It’s still shocking to see the bricked up houses that used to be people’s homes. In March I was still posting about the aftermath of the storm.

Then McAfee did an update which closed down a lot of computers including ours. 2010 wasn’t too cheerful, was it? Nothing interesting to remember in May.

June saw the opening of ExposeYourBlog! A few of us got together disgusted with the way that the owners of BlogExplosion were treating members and volunteers and created our own blog traffic exchange. This is one of the nicest parts of 2010 for me. Being part of building up a new blogging community and making a lot of new blogging friends. June saw celebrations too. 25 years of marriage on the 17th and Rob’s 50th on the 30th.

Only two posts in July!

In September we visited Dom and J-M in their apartment and moved Olivier into his. Christian had also moved out of his Grandma’s and was renting a house with a friend which they eventually bought. I fell over and my knee is still swollen. I celebrated 55. (me!?)

Autumn: Doms’ birthday in November. Mild weather brought, wasps and a hornet as well as the annual hoovering up of spiders, but twice this year.

Time flew by and the year finished with snow and cold weather. We are lucky compared to a lot of places.

I’m looking forward to 2011. As Rob said earlier tomorrow will be 1.1.11. That must be a good omen all those ones - a fresh start.

Happy New Year!

ExposeYourBlog

For the past week I’ve been working on a little project with some of my friends from BlogExplosion. We have been so disappointed by the lack of response from the owners, LiveUniverse, that we decided to create our own blog exchange ExposeYourBlog! I’m hoping that you’ll see this and if you’re interested come and see what we have to offer. The big launch is tomorrow 1st June. Remember we really are at the beginning of this. I’ve been testing the system along with the other members of the team and we’ve ironed out the lumps and bumps to bring you the best we can. If not, I can assure you that any support tickets will be dealt with.

We have a brand new forum ready to go and we’d love to have feed back and suggestions from you – see you over at ExposeYourBlog!

BlogExplosion logging in and surfing - or not

**Update**
Perhaps I was too quick off the mark. It seems that the problem has now been fixed by an administrator. It will be interesting to see what happens next…

***

If you’re reading this chances are that you’ve come through Google or book- marked my blog for future reference. As I write some members cannot log in and if they do they are unable to surf. We are trying to find out what is going on, but as there is no administrator it’s very difficult. You should be able to log into the forums and even if you can’t log in, you can read the threads. We’re trying to keep them as up to date as possible. Please DO NOT send in a support ticket - there is no one to deal with them.

The good news is that, by chance a few days ago, I managed to find the names of some of the people at LiveUniverse that we wrote to last year. I’m not sure how many of them are still there. As some of you know as long ago as last September there were reports that LiveUniverse were unable to pay some of their employees. I’m going to try sending messages to them via LiveUniverse

I think it goes without saying; don’t buy any credits or banner impressions for the time being. If you paid using PayPal and want to get your money back you probably can – it certainly works like that on eBay.

What you can do to help

Spread the world! Post on your blog about what is happening, you can copy parts of this post if you like – I don’t mind. Ask other members that read your post to spread the word too. I’ll try to keep you updated on my blogs and the forums should be pretty active if the last few hours are anything to go by

Hopefully normal service will be resumed as soon as possible

BlogExplosion update

For those not involved with BlogExplosion sorry but this isn’t an interesting post.

A lot of us have been trying to get in touch with Live Universe who are the owners of blogexplosion. We’ve tried telephoning (not ringing), contact forms (no replies so far) and emails (no replies so far). We know from different sources that Live Universe haven’t been paying their employees either. If anyone still has the list of contacts we used last year to pester them please could you post them on the forums.

There is no one in charge of administration at the moment. The last administrator disappeared, possibly because he couldn’t get back into the system. There are still a few of us approving blogs. Unfortunately as I write we’re back to 6 weeks wait. 90% of the blogs in the queue shouldn’t be there anyway.

On behalf of those of us left approving please could anyone else who has access find a few minutes to approve 10 or so blogs from time to time. The more of us there are the easier it is all around. I know that a lot of you would like to help too, but we don't have a way to let you in to the system.

If you have time a word of support on the forums would be lovely. If anyone can think of how we can contact Live Universe we’d be grateful

To finish on a positive note, there are several members who have made it known that they’d like to buy BlogExplosion. Hopefully soon something will start to move again and the mess can be sorted out.

For Nancyrowina and Tennyson’s bicentenary

This is a little thank you for Nancyrowina who lives on the Isle of Wight and, if I remember rightly, has a video of my cousin playing the saw. Nancy has been helping approving blogs on BlogExplosion and is really involved. If you’re reading this because of BlogExplosion, Nancy is one of the reasons why.

Paul Armfield is my Cousin; I last saw him when he was about 14 and a punk. It was a long time ago, but we keep in touch. He’s set the poem “Sweet and Low” to music, it’s lovely.
Jo! I’ve written to him this evening asking if he knows your cousin Emily (who also sings). If he does it means that we’re sort of related!



SWEET and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea,
Low, low, breathe and blow,
Wind of the western sea!
Over the rolling waters go,
Come from the dying moon, and blow,
Blow him again to me;
While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.

Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,
Father will come to thee soon;
Rest, rest, on mother’s breast,
Father will come to thee soon;
Father will come to his babe in the nest,
Silver sails all out of the west
Under the silver moon:
Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep

Another BlogExplosion update

You will probably come across this post on one of my other blogs:

A couple of times now the approval queue has been right down to zero. It was a strange sensation after all this time. Some of you might have noticed that your blogs were approved almost instantly! We worked very hard to get the approval queue down to a minimum. Despite all the best efforts sometimes bad blogs do get through. If you see something which offends or you think shouldn’t be there you can report the site. You’ll see the link just below the banner at the top of the page when you are surfing.

Badmin continues working quietly to fix and change things. Lots of people enjoyed the Shoutbox in the past and hopefully there will be some sort of text based chat coming soon.

The forums have been very quiet recently, why not pop by and see what there is on offer nowadays? There are new bloggers saying ‘Hi’ or details of the assigned credits bonus during the month of May. If you have any ideas, worries about BlogExplosion or general questions about blogging there is always someone around willing to help out. We’d love to hear what you think about the changes.

Blogs and flowers

This has been a normal week in blogging land, Some have good news, some have bad, some leave, some appear… Time marches on and now it is Spring.

I’ve been so busy; preparing postcards, approving blogs, gardening, feeding hungry men, hoovering up spiders - the usual. I’ve been taking my keep fit very seriously as I spend so much time on the computer. I have to go carefully because of my back but I’ve managed to put a 20 minute routine together. (As well as walking for around an hour or more everyday) I lift weights a little too. Normally 4kgs = 8.8lbs, but Olivier had added another two kilos so I thought that if I did half as many I could manage. It doesn’t work like that. I hurt my elbow. It’s settling down so I’ll be able to start again in a couple of days. I think that my clicky thumb might be coming back and the joints of my mouse clicking finger are stiff. The weather might be warm outside but our houses are designed to be cool in summer, therefore they are freezing cold in the early spring. Some days I feel quite decrepit.

Olivier has now put in his ‘wishes’ (yes they really call it wishes in French) for next year. He had his mock baccalaureate results and worked out he’s just about passed with 1 and a bit points to spare. If he put in some work he’d have really good results. Unfortunately anyone who has the bac. Is entitled to a university place here. They have them sitting on the steps in the amphitheatres on some courses. The exams at the end of the first year are really tough in order to weed out the rubbish.

BlogExplosion
This morning I’ve been approving the blogs submitted at the end of February. There are more of us doing the job now and it’s so much faster. If you haven’t heard anything from us it means that your blog has been put back into the queue for various reasons.

The new administrator has been working very hard trying to get everything up straight. He’s even tidied up the Homepage. The forums have been cleared of all that nasty spam and the spammers have been banned. There have been a lot of other problems to sort out. I know he works till the small hours and then goes off to his daytime job. He answers queries patiently and even emailed someone about problems with their mp3 player because they’d submitted a support ticket about it.( Please don’t start sending in support tickets for problems outside BlogExplosion!!)

Thank you Badmin we do appreciate all of the hard work you’ve been putting in.



Here's a weird and wonderful way to waste a few hours. If you can find your way to the garden you can create a flower too!

BlogExplosion - Good News!

We now have a new administrator who has been given powers to clean up the forums. The spam has gone so if you have a question it is more likely to be seen and answered by someone. Why not pop by and say hello.

The administrator has many tasks, hopefully soon we’ll be able to get more volunteers for helping with approvals, both of blogs and banners. There is a huge a pile of unanswered tickets to deal with and information to be updated. All of this will take time. For more details see the forums. (I know I’m plugging the forums but I’m really proud of what we achieved there.)

Thank you to everyone who took the time to write to the owners. I don’t think we’ll ever know how many letters there were. It’s good to know that people can pull together and obtain results.

BlogExplosion: very Important!!

A letter has been composed for everyone to send out to the company that owns Blogexplosion on 20th February, you can copy the letter from here.

Or you might prefer to go here for more instructions and access to a rich text format of the letter. I think anyone outside the US would probably like to send their letters a little earlier. The addresses are supplied. Just pick who you would like to address your letter to.

There is no reason why you shouldn’t compose your own letter if you want to. Please be polite. A lot of effort has gone into this project by people who care about the blogging community. If you belong to BlogExplosion, please help.

And yes, you will be seeing this post on all of my blogs

Thanks to thewatchlist, MJTaylor Spicybugz, bokonon, kelson, SelinaKimsey, sightlydrunk, bluegrassBloggo, McSpazz, lando411 and others I have surely missed for keeping the forums looking like forums. A special thanks to thewatchlist and MJTaylor who have put in all of the work for the letter.

BlogExplosion: You can help

Thanks to an idea by thewatchlist, BlogExplosion members can help with the spam problem in the forums. All you have to do is reply to a message or start a new thread so that the spam doesn’t show up. Anything will do. Even a message of support. There is even a story you can add to in one of the threads. If you don’t feel like doing that. How about writing a post like this one? I think the more members who see it the better.

As regards approvals I’m afraid that we’re still in the middle of December. I did have a couple of hours to spare last weekend, but as BlogExplosion was off I couldn’t o anything. This weekend I’ve got problems with my internet connection, so I’ve approved about 3 blogs. There are just over 3000 blogs waiting approval. Probably 1000 are real blogs suitable for blogExplosion. It would be so much quicker if we didn’t have to wade through some of the rubbish.

BlogExplosion Update

As I write the queue for approvals reaches back to before Christmas. Through the forums I’ve made contact with another approver and like me, she does what she can when she can. Some people have paid for credits they’ve never received. If you paid using PayPal you may be able to get a refund, it’s worth a try. Perhaps the owners might wake up if they start losing money.

This evening I can’t get onto BlogExplosion any way. I keep getting an “Address not found” message.

BlogExplosion Forums and Approvals

For a while now MJ and I have tried to answer whatever questions we could on the forums. Unfortunately there is no one around to give access as moderators. Today I went to see if there was anything I could help with and the forums are completely inundated with spam. It’s impossible to find any real messages, that’s how bad it has got.

What I propose is to post any information I can here so that when you surf you’ll hopefully come across the information. If you’re waiting for your blog to be approved the queue is just over three weeks long. A lot can be done to shorten the time and avoid disappointment simply by reading the requirements on the add/edit blogs page. If anyone has more information as to what is going on please leave a comment.

As for the forum spammers I think that you will find that no one is reading your ads anyway…

Where does it go?

I really don’t know where the time goes, but it goes. Exams have started up again so I’m working out of the house most mornings. As well as my postcards I’m still checking blogs for BlogExplosion. It’s not as easy as it looks and I wish everyone would read the rules before submitting their blog. I’d say 4 out of 10 blogs are suitable. I try to help in the forums a bit too – that takes up a lot of time which I can’t afford. I don’t blame some people for moaning but I think people forget it is a free service.

I saw one blog, it belonged to a teenager who’s mum and dad have split up. She was heatbroken and was pleading for comments. Then she wrote she’d got a boyfriend and hasn’t posted for a month or so. I hope she’s okay. I do get involved with what’s going on…

Omnipresident

This is what our newspaper called Nicolas Sarkozy the other day. I remember asking myself 'just what does the French president do' in the past because we only saw M. Chirac on special occasions. M. Sarkozy seems to be getting involved in anything and everything. It must really annoy his staff. I used to know the names of the French prime ministers, but this time I don’t, because the president is very high profile.

Just in case he does happen on my blog (he is a blogger and perhaps he is a member of Blogmad or Blogexplosion and he's the same age as me), my husband works for a government department. Recently if his salary slip runs to two pages he receives them in two envelopes. Think of the money and paper which could be saved…..

Romantic
I picked this up while surfing on Blogexplosion


You are Galadriel, Lady of Light. You like nature,
especially trees. You are wise and people come
to you for advice. You are friendly to other
people, even strangers, even though the movie
made you seem like a monotonous dud, as far as
personality goes.


Which Middle-earth maiden are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Has this ever happened to you?
Yesterday I surfed Blogexplosion and Blogcowd. The same blog came out first on both.

Tips from rapists
I found this on Narcisstic MissyOng's blog while surfing at Blogexplosion. You never know when it might come in useful.

Snap-O-Mania
I found this on Blogexplosion. Well it made me laugh!

New addition
I’ve now added Ric Seaberg to my blogroll. He who invented the word “Roombar”. I found him on blogexplosion, a very good read and you can listen to his songs too.