October 27, 2009
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Where Do We Go If Xanga Collapses?
Over the last 4-5 years, we have watched a trend on xanga that comes around where people start leaving xanga.
We watched as xanga went from being in the top 100 on the Internet to being at around 1200 (This is according to compete.com. Here is the link: Link)
You can also see on that link that xanga has now fallen to under 4 million visits a month and is going through another one of its decline phases. You have watched in the last few months as bloggers have said they are going to leave xanga.
Whenever you see those posts, you have reactions for or against those posts. Some people call those people disloyal and others just chalk it up to the inevitable decline of xanga that caused Mashable.com to call xanga one of the fastest declining sites on the Internet.
But some of us have stayed in the boat and have pledged to go down with xanga and type until its dying day.
But as I have watched some leave xanga and I see others talking about leaving xanga and even others talk about where they will go if xanga collapses, a few thoughts come to mind.
Where would we go from here?
We watch as some bloggers go to wordpress or blogger. We see others leave for youtube. Youtube is great if you like being on video. Most people struggle with blogger and wordpress because they lose the community feel that they love on xanga.
After I talked to the xanga team member who left xanga and said they were down to 7 people and were declining, I gave some thought about where I would go if xanga died.
I think the best place for a blogger to go is Facebook.
Some people may be surprised to hear me say Facebook. But actually Facebook is the best place for a blogger. Most bloggers that are coming from the xanga format will struggle at wordpress because they are used to comments. So they will miss the social part of xanga. They will not be able to blog and have the comments over on twitter either.
But Facebook is doing an awesome job of feeding bloggers right now. What happens is a person posts to their blogging site (Xanga, wordpress or blogger) and then link the posts into the facebook status update.
Take a close look at a few people on facebook. Have you noticed that with little effort that many of them are getting far more comments on their facebook blog than you are on your xanga site? I have a friend that left xanga and just posts links and thoughts on her facebook site. She can get as many as 25 comments on those thoughts on facebook and she received only 3-5 comments per post on xanga. I have noticed the same trend with others on Facebook. They are writing their blogs somewhere else and using facebook as the discussion thread.
I link my xanga stuff on facebook and get more comments here but that is only because people are used to going to my xanga site to read. Most of you would get 4-5 times the discussion on facebook than you would xanga. Facebook is actually falling over itself to link those threads too. They started with the highlights and have now moved to the “news feed.” So Facebook is intentionally driving traffic to those links. (I have always wondered what would happen if xanga drove traffic to the bloggers with intention to grow them). But you will notice that Facebook is giving the ”news feed” top priority by putting it a the top of the page. This is brilliant. They realized bloggers wanted discussion and they are making it easy for bloggers to run their discussion over there.
In fact, some of you have a ton more friends and subscribers on xanga than you do facebook but you can easily get more discussion on Facebook with no effort. Why? Because people are on Facebook all day. And they are looking to communicate with whoever is there.
I am convinced that someone who is focused could easily build their facebook site to get 200-300 comments per facebook update. In fact, another friend that just left xanga received about 40 something comments on her last status update and 37 on the status update before that.
I am not suggesting anyone leave xanga. I am still in the boat with you (It would be easier if Kate Winslet was on this boat). I am simply suggesting that those who are jumping out anyway or are concerned about where they go from here should probably just add all of their friends to facebook.
