Skip to main content

Xanga’s shutting down unless it raises $60k by mid-July

relaunch xanga
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Before Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Livejournal … we found a home in Xanga. At least it was your Internet home if you grew up in the 90s. If case you’re not aware, Xanga was one of the most popular Web blogging service with teens in the early 2000s before it was abandoned for the likes of today’s social networks – and now it’s facing the possibility of shutting down for good unless it can raise $60,000 by July 15 to stay afloat.

Recommended Videos

“We’re now at a crossroads, as our lease is up soon on the networking facility where we’ve been hosting our servers,” Xanga CEO John Hiler writes in a blog post. “As the status quo is no longer possible, we’ve been working to figure out the best way for the Xanga community to move forward.”

 To relaunch Xanga, Hiler says the team would need about $60,000 of funding to port Xanga to open source blogging software (such as WordPress and TypePad). That transformation could help Xanga reinvent itself visually, functionally, and hopefully, in popularity as well.

So you may be wondering, “$60k doesn’t seem like so much when things like Instagram and Tumblr sold for a billion dollars.” That’s because Hiler aims to also turn Xanga into a paid service. Users would have to pay Xanga a monthly subscription to host their blogs although membership to just view Xanga-hosted blogs would still be free. This experience would also be advertisement-free and allow users better spam and custom design controls – sort of to blogging what App.net has been to Twitter, although Xanga brings with it years of personal sentiment as well. 

The Relaunch Xanga campaign officially starts from now until July 15. If the site does not come up with $60k (again, that’s 0.0054 percent of what Yahoo bought Tumblr for), Hiler says that’ll be the last day of the nostalgia-filled blogs as we know them. Before it shuts down, however, Xanga will provide users free downloads of their blog posts to archive their teen angsts so it’s not all going to just disappear.

Still, unless it’s offering more than just a place to revisit your childhood, it may just be time to kiss Xanga goodbye. That’s adieu to vague posts of song lyrics, Photobucket picture mega-posts, surveys you answered about yourself, and detailed accounts of that one weekend you spent in the summer of 2003. Man, it’s good to grow up.

Topics
Natt Garun
Former Digital Trends Contributor
An avid gadgets and Internet culture enthusiast, Natt Garun spends her days bringing you the funniest, coolest, and strangest…
Bluesky finally adds a feature many had been waiting for
A blue sky with clouds.

Bluesky has been making a lot of progress in recent months by simplifying the process to sign up while at the same time rolling out a steady stream of new features.

As part of those continuing efforts, the social media app has just announced that users can now send direct messages (DMs).

Read more
Incogni: Recover your privacy and remove personal information from the internet
Incogni remove your personal data from brokers and more

Everything you do while online is tracked digitally. Often connected to your email address or an issued IP, trackers can easily identify financial details, sensitive information like your social security number, demographics, contact details, like a phone number or address, and much more. In many ways, this information is tied to a digital profile and then collated, recorded, and shared via data brokers. There are many ways this information can be scooped up and just as many ways, this information can be shared and connected back to you and your family. The unfortunate reality is that, for most of us, we no longer have any true privacy.

The problem is exacerbated even more if you regularly use social media, share content or images online, or engage in discussions on places like Reddit or community boards. It's also scary to think about because even though we know this information is being collected, we don't necessarily know how much is available, who has it, or even what that digital profile looks like.

Read more
Reddit just achieved something for the first time in its 20-year history
The Reddit logo.

Reddit’s on a roll. The social media platform has just turned a profit for the first time in its 20-year history, and now boasts a record 97.2 million daily active users, marking a year-over-year increase of 47%. A few times during the quarter, the figure topped 100 million, which Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman said in a letter to shareholders had been a “long-standing milestone” for the site.

The company, which went public in March, announced the news in its third-quarter earnings results on Tuesday.

Read more