Vox is ded

[charmian]

http://team.vox.com/library/post/vox-is-closing-september-30-2010.html

Vox is going under, possibly because of a rumored merger of Six Apart. Apparently according to Comscore, there are still 5 million monthly visitors (although other web analytics companies say less), but bigger sites have had the plug pulled on them.

Anyway, especially considering that most social media/blogging sites are not public, users generally have no idea about the financials (and current financial health/future health) of a site; therefore, they can only assume that it is unknown how probable it is that the site will go under in the near or distant future. So basically, when you use a lot of these sites, you assume that it could all go kerblooey one day, which isn't a problem if the stuff you post is ephemeral, or if you have a backup. Most of my stuff is pretty ephemeral, and I try to back up when I can. However, backups assume that the format is readable by either by me, or by whatever site I'd like to restore to.

Comments

[feathertail]

I don't think it's quite the same thing, though ... WP isn't exactly a social network in the same sense that LJ or DW is.

[charmian]

Hmm, I don't know. If they allowed people to have more 'friends' in their private blogs and improved the interface on them (and also added friends groups), they possibly could improve the social there enough to compete with LJ on that front. (But then, they also don't have communities)

[matgb]

they also don't have communities

Don't need them, any blog can have multiple authors, which is effectively better than Comms as you can just bring in new authors to an existing blog, and remove them later if you want.