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

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.

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…