Those who use Facebook and blog may have been familiar with the Blog Friends application. It was a great tool that let you keep up with friends blog posts and find posts based on your interests.
Then you could add the application to your Facebook profile to share your favorite blog posts with all your friends. You could also add your own blogs tospan style="color: black;" share post, track stats/spanspan style="color: black;" and watch posts spread virally across the Blog Friends network. /p
pWhen I logged into Facebook today I saw this message. We will miss you Blog Freinds and look forward to Buzzspotr!/span/p
p"emBlog Friends is closing/em
/p
pemDear Blog Friend, We’re very sorry to announce that Blog Friends is to close down./em/p
pemWhenbr /
i-together raised some seed funding back in the summer of 2007, Benjie,br /
Jof and I fully anticipated taking Blog Friends onto great things, andbr /
we worked as hard as we could to make that happen./em/p
pemAlthough itbr /
appears simple on the surface, Blog Friends is actually an unusuallybr /
complex and resource-intensive application to maintain and grow. Itbr /
also is pretty original in the way it combines your extended, fuzzybr /
social network and your interests as filters for your blogbr /
recommendation River. /em/p
pemBecause Blog Friends was so originalbr /
and quite ambitious, we had no way of projecting accurately just howbr /
many users we could welcome before our solution began to creak. Webr /
hoped for 100,000. It turned out that 20,000 was closer to the mark.br /
And now that we have around 27,000 users signed up, Blog Friends hasbr /
been brought pretty much to its knees (as you will have noticed frombr /
the increasing frequency of the error messages you may have beenbr /
seeing)./em/p
pemAt the same time, the way that Blog Friends isbr /
currently tied into the Facebook Platform means we have been at thebr /
mercy of Facebook’s frequent modifications of their Platformbr /
specifications, and that has also been another disabling factor for us.br /
/em/p
pemWhat is needed is a complete rewrite of Blog Friends, onebr /
that makes it properly scaleable and independent of Facebook. As youbr /
can imagine, this is a huge undertaking and unfortunately we don’t havebr /
the resource or money to do this; we have never inflicted anybr /
advertising on you our users, so we haven’t made a penny in revenuebr /
from Blog Friends. /em/p
pemWe’re shutting down, as of today. /em/p
pemJof,br /
Benjie and I would like to offer you our heartfelt thanks for all yourbr /
support and encouragement, and our sincere apologies for the annoyancebr /
of all those error messages and now the complete cessation of the Blogbr /
Friends service. /em/p
pemWe had an amazing time building Blogbr /
Friends with you, and we have learned so much—about technology andbr /
business, but mostly about ourselves, each other, and all you wonderfulbr /
people./em/p
pemFinally, some of you may know that we have been working since the New Year on a sister service to Blog Friends, Buzzspotr.com,br /
which we hoped to launch quickly, create a "buzz", raise funding, thenbr /
get back to work on rebuilding Blog Friends from the ground up.br /
However, we have recently had to refocus on our contracting work (seebr /
brainbakery.com and weaverluke.com for details) to support ourselvesbr /
before being able to launch Buzzspotr. /em/p
pemWe still hope thatbr /
Blog Friends will rise from the ashes, and that Buzzspotr will see thebr /
light of day, before too very long. If you would like to keep tabs onbr /
our progress, you can do so at a href="http://i-together.com/" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://i-together.com']);(new Image()).src = "/ajax/ct.php?app_id=3221375004&action_type=3&post_form_id=d9f0db207002ed6c186e198b731d8480&position=3&' + Math.random();return true"i-together.com/a, weaverluke.com and a href="http://brainbakery.com/" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://brainbakery.com']);(new Image()).src = "/ajax/ct.php?app_id=3221375004&action_type=3&post_form_id=d9f0db207002ed6c186e198b731d8480&position=3&' + Math.random();return true">brainbakery.com blogs, and on twitter: weaverluke.
Thanks again and we hope your Blog Friending was happy.
Luke, Jof and Benjie—the Blog Friends team"… Read the rest
