May 22, 2009

• Why Xanga Can’t be Fixed

  Support of the “Ish” sites was never really support of the Xanga Team.  The xanga team went from 18 members to 12 members.

  Many of you probably remember when I wrote a post saying I thought xanga should drive traffic to regular ordinary users instead of to the “ish” sites.  Xanga had created the “ish” sites to act as ad sites.  At the time, I mentioned that xanga was driving a lot of traffic to those sites but it was a failed plan to make xanga grow.  Right after I wrote that post, you saw xanga feature a bunch of sites that talked about “Xanga Appreciation” or post that implied that people should stop being critical of xanga.

  The thought process was such that xanga needed those “ish” sites for ads and that we needed to be loyal to xanga and not be critical of xanga.  So loyalty on xanga became loyalty to the “ish” sites or at least an understanding that “Thou shalt not speak against an Ish site.”

  I then wrote a post where I said in the post that if xanga continued to not drive traffic to the ordinary user, the xanga team as we know it would break up. 

  Have you noticed something?  That xanga team had 18 members at the time I wrote that post.  The xanga team now has 12 members.
   
  What happened? 

  We were told that the “ish” sites would bring in more money to xanga.  You can remember that I pointed out at the time that the most popular of the “ish” sites was datingish and xanga team members were releasing that the datingish site was only making $500 a month. 

  Xanga needed the “ish” sites to grow and make money fast.  I knew the process would fail.  I even said in a few comments at the time that if xanga was able to multiply up to 10 ish sites that they would still not be making enough money.

  Why?  There are 12 ish sites now.  Say that the average “ish” site makes $500 a month.  Multiply that times 12 sites and you get $6000 a month.  Now I am sure datingish makes more than $500 a month.  But I also know google ads well enough that most of the other sites are not even close to $500 a month.

  So even if you are optimistic, xanga is making about $72,000 a year off the “ish” sites.  (I believe the sites are making much less than that).  Now xanga is located in New York.  So the cost of living is different there.  I believe the lowest paid xanga team member makes a little over $48,000.  That is actually an old number I heard a few years ago so it may be much more now. 

  Do you see the problem?  Those “ish” sites are probably really only making close to that $48,000 a year even if we are optimistic.  So xanga started a plan a year ago and the plan pays for one person on the xanga team after a year.

  I want to say this as clearly as I can.  Support of the xanga team is not the same as support of the “Ish” sites.

  If you support the whole xanga team, then you would support a plan that would have kept the other 6 xanga team members.  Now I realize we are in a recession.  But in most businesses, losing a third of your staff is considered to be pretty serious. 

  So we are down to 12 staff members on the xanga team.  What are those staff members doing?  Several of them are writing for the “ish” sites.  They are also editing the “ish” sites.  So xanga has not only lost a third of its staff, the xanga team is spending half the day over on the “ish” sites.

  You can actually test this.  Go over to an ish site and troll it or spam it with comments.  How quickly will xanga respond?  They will block you so fast it will make your head spin.  How can that happen?  It requires that the xanga team spend signficant time on those sites all day long. 

  What is the result of this whole process?  Xanga has lost a third of its team members.  But the team members that are left are spending significant time over on the “ish” sites.  That means there is less staff dedicated to actually fixing problems on xanga.  I predicted a year ago that xanga would see an actual increase in problems on xanga.  Why did I predict that?  I was talking to xanga team members that were spending all of their time on the “ish” sites.  I knew that it would require them to continue to spend time over on those sites.  Who does that leave to fix xanga problems?  Just a few people.

  What has happened on xanga?  Have you noticed that an increase of features do not work anymore?  I am not just talking about the recent glitches.  I am talking about problems like I have with my reply notifications.  I sent an email to xanga a few months ago and told them I had signed up for the reply notifications.  I never get them anymore.  Xanga was so nice in their reply to me.  But they didn’t fix it.  So I sent another email to them.  Once again, I received the most polite response.  You might know that I am still not getting the reply notifications.

  Why?  Because there are less people on the xanga team.  Plus the people that are left on the xanga team are taking care of the “ish” sites.  So there is less staff committed to fixing xanga problems.  Now I think you all know that the reply notifications is pretty important on xanga to traffic.  It increases communication between users.  But it hasn’t worked for me for months.  Now some people would consider me a xanga insider.  If I can’t get help, you probably can’t get help either.

  I want to tell you that this is not a criticism of the xanga team.  I think they are working their butts off.  I am sure it is frustrating for them to see all these posts and pulses talking about how xanga is not working.  But the reality is that most of us are sort of getting used to xanga not working.  We love the xanga team and we wouldn’t want to speak against them.  We are thankful for that personal note from a xanga team member that we love telling us he/she will get right on it.  But it still isn’t getting fixed.

  There are other consequences to xanga being smaller.  Xanga doesn’t have the lawyer that was a former prosecutor for online crimes working for them anymore.  He is one of the people that is no longer showing on the xanga team list.  When an underaged user told me she had met with an adult, I was able to report that to the xanga specialist.  He would jump right on the problem.  When another underaged user told me that an adult had contacted her and made sexual references to her, I was able to contact the lawyer and he jumped right on it and contacted her.

  Recently there was a case of an underaged user being contacted by a much older man.  He was pretending to be a young lesbian girl.  The underaged girl claimed that the man had sent her naked photos.  I reported this issue to xanga directly.  The response:  There isn’t much we can do about it.  A month later, the pressure on xanga built and xanga finally responded to the issue in public and said they were doing everything they could to help out.

  I have also contacted xanga about issues like threats by one xanga user to another.  Xanga’s response:  I didn’t get one.  Xanga really can’t do anything about it anymore.  Go ahead and try it.  Go threaten people all you want.  There is no process to protect people. 

  Once again, I don’t blame the xanga team.  I think they are working hard.  I think some of them are super tired.

  I do not think that support of the “ish” sites is support of the xanga team.  I think the xanga team is spending so much time working on those sites, that they are losing traffic fast.  I do think xanga is in a difficult position.  If xanga were to do away with those sites and turn off the friend bots, I think xanga would see their traffic decrease by 50% in the next six months.  The friend bots are generating some of xanga’s traffic now.

  What would I predict in the next year if xanga doesn’t change course?  I predict more of the xanga product will just not function correctly.  I also think that you will see xanga users reduce to a more loyal and dedicated group that will learn to function around the product failures.  Xanga has some loyal users that really don’t care whether the product works perfectly.  I do think you will see the xanga team shrink some more and I think xanga will become more glitchy.

  Does that sound negative?  Yes.  It was negative several months ago when I said that the xanga team as you knew it would break up.  But it was correct. 

                                                                                 

  • 7:21 am
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