Good evening folks! It’s been a little while since I’ve posted, but since I’ve paid for the privilege this time I feel compelled to say something!

Here’s a photo of my beautiful wife & child:

hanging out! good times

and thats it!

Good to see a few of you back!

Gigantic black balls sitting right in front of your face. What are you going to do about it Xanga? Shut down the whole site???? 

all insults below must be origional

every email. every phone call. every page view. every text message. every status update. every message sent. every credit card transaction.

there is a camera on almost every corner of every street. cameras on the highways. cameras on buildings and tucked on traffic lights.

There are so many federal laws on the books that: “There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime” -John Baker, Louisiana State University law professor

I’m going to throw a few more bucks in the direction of the Xanga fundraiser, mainly because I can. 

The minimum donation has been reduced to $1.00

I’m going to be donating $10.00/week from here on out because I love this site. 

https://xanga.crowdhoster.com/relaunch-xanga

What are you going to be donating? 

I’ll keep this simple:

Not everyone can afford the yearly subscription of $48.00/year. 

However, we have some SERIOUSLY talented folks on Xanga that could benefit greatly from Xanga 2.0

Here’s the deal, donate what you can afford. One dollar, 10 dollars or whatever your comfortable with. 

Every time the account hits $48.00 I will purchase another 1 year membership and hand it out to someone who wants it/needs it based on a lottery system. 

Lottery system rules, simple: anyone who is interested in receiving a free year has their name LITERALLY put into a hat and pulled every time we hit $48.00

As I mentioned in my other post I’m covering the first free membership, which is going to @my_final_username (enjoy!)

Here’s the donation button:  

Who wants a free membership?

I have some ideas that WILL make it happen for a lot of people. 

Coming soon. 

1 free membership to “Xanga 2.0″ will be given to a shingle random commenter on this post. 

Let’s say Xanga decide to go ahead and use WordPress. Keep in mind that WordPress is NOT like Xanga, its a blogging technology and not necessarily the kind of platform you’re used to. With wordpress comes a ton of tools and an incredibly powerful and customizable engine. I think Jon, and the Xanga team have the right idea with switching. With that being said, here are a few random thoughts that crossed my mind. 

Xanga needs to come up with something revolutionary to keep going. Either that, or they need to come really refine a couple of good ideas and make them profitable. Not just profitable for Xanga, but profitable for the bloggers as well. 

With that being said, one comment the Xanga Team made hit me like a ton of bricks;

“Group blogging – At long last, you’ll be able to allow others to blog on your site… and share moderation rights on your blog.” -Xanga Team

That’s not a new idea, in fact, every single [profitable] blog on the planet, with very few exceptions, use aggregate posting. Multiple users on each account, combining to form one themed blog, is the pinnacle of modern blogging. 

Taking this one step further, Xanga already has a built-in community, and if done right, could have the means to push a LOT of traffic to a LOT of different paid Xanga sites.

Sites that could, theoretically, provide their own revenue from ads. 

I know a LOT of bloggers here on Xanga who have never had to worry about paying hosting fee’s or membership fee’s for their blogs, I also know there are the same EXACT amount of bloggers here on Xanga who write incredibly well and have never once been compensated for their talent and efforts. 

I think a re-launch of Xanga could change that. 

I am going out on a limb here, and I want you to climb out on it with me. I took the plunge and paid the $48.00 to “reserve” myself one of the first re-launched Xanga sites.

1. I need a team of 10 writers. 
2. The short term goal is to have 1-4 posts a day written by multiple different people. Long-term goal is 6-10 posts a day. 
3. My sites theme will be politics and tech. 

I will pay for the Xanga site for the 1st year, all I want is to gather people to write for it. After the 1st year we will split the cost among all of the writers and split the ad-revenue among all of the writers! 

I love writing, I love this community and I want it to thrive. Aggregate blogging is just one of the many possibilities of a new Xanga that will allow us to continue doing what we love. And hey! we can all make a bit of money doing it! 

*IF YOU LIKE THIS IDEA PLEASE RECOMMEND THIS POST. 
**IF YOU’D LIKE TO BE PART OF MY TEAM PLEASE LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS. 
***FEEL FREE TO STEAL THIS ENTIRE POST AND USE IT AS YOUR OWN, PICK YOUR OWN THEME, GET YOUR OWN TEAM… LET’S ROCK AND ROLL! (let me know in the comments what theme you’d like your team to have!)

Love you guys.

PLEASE RE-POST THIS ON YOUR SITE IF YOU WANT THESE QUESTIONS ANSWERED. 

Before any of us donate a penny to the “save Xanga” fundraiser I think the Xanga Team needs to answer some basic questions:

1. Why have you ignored mobile for so long, and why, when you finally created an App, why did you never update it or fix the bugs? 

(will you promise to focus on mobile if Xanga is re-born?)

2. After hundreds (thousands) of bloggers grew frustrated with your “ish” sites, why did you continue the failed project and alienate so many of us? 

(will you eliminate the ish sites and focus on ALL bloggers and not just topical keyword-friendly bloggers?)

3. Why has the website been completely ignored and seemingly unattended for months and months on-end? 

(will you promise to retain the absolutely amazing customer service you had years ago?)

4. Why are we using the same exact user-interface we used when I started my first Xanga blog in 2002? Where’s the updated UI?

(what plans for a new and streamlined UI do you have?)

5. Why haven’t you demonstrated a basic model for what a new Xanga would look like? Is this plan real? Where are the mock-ups? What will it look like? Have you tried to implement a small-scale beta? 

(what really happens if you reach your $60,000.00 goal, we don’t know, you haven’t shown us.)

6. How is it that sites like 4-chan and reddit still exist without being as heavily monetized as yours?  

(Could it be possible there has been quite a bit of mal-investment?)

7. Why is the minimum donation $48.00 when the basic principal of crowd-source funding is getting as many people to pitch in whatever amount they can?

(Will you reduce the minimum contribution so that more people can contribute?) 

8. Where are your investors? With a halfway decent business plan you should be able to find $60,000 extremely fast, (99% of SMALL business loans are over 100K). What does your business plan look like? Do you have one?  

(This is the most serious question here, who DOES have faith that Xanga can succeed?)

9. With the obvious failures in Xanga management, why have you not hired new leadership? 

(Who’s in charge these days anyway?)

10. Will you, on the record, admit that you have absolutely no plans to continue with Xanga in any way after July 15th? 

(nothing in your recent blog post seems to indicate any sort of passion for rescuing this community, what are your real plans?)

**EDIT** Please rec this post and comment DEMAND that the Xanga Team answer every single one of these questions. ****

I heard the news on facebook, Dan posted that he’d hacked the Xanga teams blog, I thought it was a joke but decided to check it out anyway. 

I can’t honestly wrap my head around the idea that Xanga might be just… gone. I’ve neglected the site, stopped posting for months at a time and basically forgot it existed for a while, but it was always there for me to come back to. 

Not gonna lie, getting a little emotional at the near-inevitability of Xanga finally kicking the bucket. 

I love you guys. Even the crazy ones. 

www.facebook.com/jonathan.edwards

Keep writing. Don’t you fucking stop writing.