Not sure what to say about this one. To be honest, I'm at a loss for words (a first for me)
Yesterday, a whole host of pretty prominent blogs "closed down" abruptly (at least as far as I was concerned) It's possible there was communication within the blogs leading up to the switch off yesterday, but from my perspective it all hit when I read this e-mail on Jason Calacanis' blog about PVRWire and this one on AdJab (which should be very familiar to those who read Jaffe Juice), plus a more cryptic one on Chris Thilk's other blog (which is not closing down, I think). BTW, no explanation on PVRWire.
Taking a step back for a moment, here's your brief chronology:
- Jason Calacanis starts Weblogs, Inc., a blogging network (competitive to Gawker et al)
- Jason sells Weblogs to AOL for $40 Million give or take a penny
- Jason works with AOL/Netscape for a while and moves on to Sequoia Capital
- AOL closes a bunch of blogs down. Here's the only explanation I have via JC:
As part of the consolidation of niche blogs at AOL they are shuttering PVRWire. This one I don't agree with because PVRWire is clearly on the road to hitting 1M pages a month as you can see below.
Based on that trend they should hit 1M by the 3rd quarter, and 1M pages a monh is when a blog becomes worth managing at a big companies like AOL.
I've offered AOL to take over these blogs and give them the ad slots for a period of time... I'm waiting to hear back. I'm doubtful.
For what it's worth, I'd be happy to take over AdJab as well or figure out what to do with the brand. I would say, Tom, Adam, Chris et al...open invitation to write for Jaffe Juice if you ike, but I have a feeling these guys are good to go and have a plan based on Chris' post and the very "What the F...." farewell from them, which was bizarre to say the least...no venting...no explanation....just a very timid adeau.
Is this blogfading? No. Are these blogging layoffs...yes, but why? Both blogs have impressive Technorati rankings. So why then? Where's the explanation from AOL? I feel they have an obligation to justify this decision. Actually I feel the AdJab guys should have been a little more upfront as well?
The AdJab community deserves more...but then again, we did these guys wonderful commentary and wisdom for free, so do we have any rights to anything at the end of the day?
All I can put this down to, until I find out more information is CLUELESS, CLUELESS AOL (AGAIN!)
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