Slashdot Mirror
Hosting Service Closes 3000 Blogs Without Notice
marmoset writes "Citing the high costs of running the free service, performance
concerns, and health problems, Dave Winer closed down the weblogs.com
hosting service without any prior notice. As many as 3000 sites are now inacessible, and
the users who want to transfer their data elsewhere have to ask
(politely) for it to be exported. As might be expected, reactions range from understanding
to
enraged.
Netcraft has a report, too."
So, netcraft confirmed that *weblogs are dying?
The real question is whether or not this is allowed in the TOS. If it is, well than, that's how the cookie crumbles, users should have been making backups.
If it is not allowed by the TOS than users have a right to be outraged.
The Technonaut
Why would you trust any hosting company to keep the only copy of your data, if it were all that important to you?
When your data is on someone else's servers, and you don't have any of that data properly backed up, then you are completely at their mercy when it comes to being able to use it or losing it entirely. This is especially true when the service that they are supplying is being provided for free.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I can forsee quite a few people complaining about this in their weblogs.
Oh...wait...
Having your blogging service totally shut you out without notice finally seems like the perfect thing to blog about.
- sm
Jesus saves and backs up nightly!
It's as though a couple of thousand babbling idiots were suddenly silenced.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
From the Wired article: "I just have my fingers crossed that my girlfriend gets her blog back," said software programmer Tom Gortell. "She feels like someone just sucked out her brains. I don't get it, it's just an online journal, right? But she feels like her entire life has been stolen."
The guy works as a programmer and he never told her to make backups? And then he tells Wired that he doesn't get why she is upset. Somebody better e-mail him the number of a good florist.
But seriously, he should have told her to make backups. Free service. You get what you pay for. What more can you say?
People couldn't type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this.
Well, let's suppose you're Dave Winer. Stay with me here.
You know that no matter what you do to close down the site, you will be flamed and people will hate you. This is true for anybody, not just Dave Winer. Imagine if slashdot closed up one day. I bet the non-paying slashdotters would complain the loudest.
And you know the traffic will go UP immediately.
You just don't want the hassle.
Also, remember you're Dave Winer and you have Dave Winer's.. let's say "unique" personality.
The only logical thing to do is close it up, wait a few days for the dust to settle, and then deal with the sycophants, leaving the rest to rot.
At least LiveJournal didn't shut down without notice. Otherwise we'd all be up tonight digging mass graves for disfranchised teenagers all over the world.
Considering that the majority of the data is displayed on users' browsers, they could have shut down the sites but allowed the owners of the blogs to grab the data. It would probably have been less traffic in the few days before shutdown then normal traffic.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Honestly, the amount of snarky comments along the lines of 'Oh, blogs suck anyway, who cares.', and 'It's all idiotic blabbing anyway.' are getting on my nerves. Really, no one thinks you're one of the cool kids now just because you think blogs are passe. Stop trying to be a post-ironic hipster type who's oh-so-tired of it all. Posting on Slashdot won't get you laid. Neither will having a blog, of course, but that's my point.
I don't understand the level of hostility against blogs. No one's putting a gun to your head and making you read them. I actually support efforts by Google and other search engines to separate blog results from regular webpage results. Sometimes I don't want to have my search results skewed by blogs, and sometimes I really want to know how the 'blogosphere' feels about a particular issue. But while that happens, just ignore them. If you hate them so much, don't read them. But, really, infantile attacks don't make you superior in any way to the bloggers.
I know most blogs are, indeed, just self-centered rambling, or 15 year old girls talking about their latest dream with N'Sync and a pony, but on the other hand, they're valid outlets for a lot of people to just vent, express themselves, and give their opinions on issues. If you don't want to hear those opinions, then just don't visit their blogs. It's that simple.
And yes, I do have a blog of my own, no, I'm not giving out the address here, since it's basically just a self-centered little website that's read by me and maybe 2 friends, and that's fine by me.
"Two things are infinite: the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the first one." - Albert Einstein
To all saying users should backup their blogs...
Exactly how are they supposed to do this?
A fundamental weakness in the blog paradigm is that there is CGI software between you and your raw data, in order to impose a style on it. This is particularly true of third party hosting, which provides cookie-cuter blogs through common software, where the only thing that differes from user to user is a few settings and their URL.
Backups usually only make sense if (1) you can get at the raw, preformatted data, and (2) that getting at that data will do you any good -- e.g. you will be able to externalize it the same way somewhere else.
At this point, blog-hosting service providers really don't have standards for their variable data, so even if you had a backup, it really wouldn't get your blog back up on the net, without a lot of work.
-- Terry
No no, Slashdot is still up. :P
There. Now you're up to speed.
If it's still in the same rack as it was 6 months ago, that is. I used to work for a web hosting company that had some co-lo space in a hosting facility. We set up 2 of the servers for weblogs.com as well as another server for another site. I never met Dave, but did everything through his partner. His partner was a super-nice guy, Linux afficianado, and slashdot reader. Kinda sad that they ran out of money.
(I have to be a bit vague on the details due to NDAs and such... Sorry for not including any specifics)
Or entirely not like that at all.
- c -
You seem to be operating under some mistaken assumptions. Winer still owns Userland. He is being disingenuous when he says he no longer runs Userland. Maybe he doesn't hold the official title of CEO, but he still owns the company, and it is operated under his direction.
You also seem to be assuming that this hostility towards Winer is unjustified because he gave out these services for free. I assure you from personal experience that Winer treats you like shit even if you're a paying customer.
You also seem to believe it when Dave says he's getting out of the hosting business. Wrong again. He's just killing off the FREE weblogs (with the exception of his suck-up buddies like Searls). His servers still host the paid customers of Radio Userland, hosted on radio.weblogs.com, so he can't dump all of weblogs.com like he claims he's doing. The big question is why did he have all those websites moved to HIS server if they were paid customers of Userland?
You also seem to think these criticisms are unnecessarily harsh. I disagree. Winer is notorious for baiting people, then editing the exchange of messages. His usual tactic is to say something offensive, then someone responds in a similarly hotheaded manner, then Winer edits his original remark to something innocuous, so it seems like the response is a completely flaming response to a polite remark. So it is not too surprising that people jump at the chance to respond to Winer's insanity in a forum that isn't controlled by Winer. These remarks are quite civil by Winer's standards of conduct.
Yes, blogs do have their uses - say, group collaboration. FLOSS. But there are a fascinating number of them that are just self-important rant-books with no real direction.
March 1997, one of my little weekly columns (didn't call them "blogs" back then) gets a mention in Us. Unfortunately I'd been hosting it in donated /~username space, and right after the magazine puts the blurb to bed, the owners of the bookstore hosting my site decide they don't want to run a server anymore.
No warning, no forwarding, no nothing. I have everything backed up, so I register a domain, get hosting, and my site's back online within a few days... only at another address. I'm running around trying to update my entries at all the major search engines, posting to appropriate newsgroups, just trying to get the word out that my columns had moved.
Then Us comes out, glowing little blurb recommending my column... and the *old* URL. My first major national press and no one can find me.
That is the most insidious part of what Winer has done. He has separated all those bloggers from their readers, leaving them no way to leave a forwarding address. Anyone who doesn't backup their content takes their chances, but how do you backup your audience?
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic