PostHeaderIcon Massively No Longer So Massive: Crash

crash

Whatever the hell AOL is doing I don't know. But the UPDATE is that Massively (and Tateru) is back.

There are a lot of blogs on the net. and there are a lot of blogs about Second Life. However, of those blogs about second life, there are very few that can be considered news blogs. Practically all others are opinion blogs. Many are great and a lot of fun to read, such as CeNedra's "Cen's Two Cents"; and there are the fashion and product blogs like Haven Design. After that, you have what I personally consider the whacked out sensationalist rumor-monger blogs where the unsubstantiated gossip flies like bullets ricocheting in a magnetized metal room where some, not all writers and contributors often create witch-hunts and get everyone's blood boiling toward their own agenda, such as shopping cart disco.

Then there are news sites. Blogs that actually try to be good, informative news sites that let you know the skinny on the serious and not-so-serious, but noteworthy items in Second Life. Oh, there are those tabloids that are not a far cry from rumor-mongering, alarmist sites such as shopping cart disco, such as the "Second Life Herald" - which to me are almost dangerous in their radical-leaning subjects.

What makes them 'dangerous' in my opinion is the way they practice the old subversive act of hiding a lie between two truths, thus, misleading the lie to also be truth. Unfortunately, most of the rubbish at 'the Herald' should be taken with serious grain of salt. Even their reporting about a serious issue is done tongue-in-cheek, an accurate and important story is still presented no differently than that "I had elvis's alien baby on a flying saucer" type headline.

Then there are the ones that try to do a genuine news service with regard to second life, such as New World Notes, Second Life News Network, and Your Second Place among many others including the real world news organization Reuters.

By far, my personal favorite has always been Massively SL items. Now, I never much liked Massively as a web site and blog. I really hate the way they mish-mash all the different genre's of news together on the front page. Navigation was pretty bad and I have to create a custom search and bookmark the resulting query. Frankly, Massively - as an overall blog - sucks.

But, I read the SL articles religeously. Especially those items written by Tateru Nino.

However, I began to wonder what was happening when the last posting about anything Second Life was on the 23rd of July, 2008. At first, I suspected some technical glitch. Then... I got wind that Massively's parent organization America Online (AOL) put the brakes on Massively and many of their other blogging properties. The word was that budgets are being cutback and a two-week hiatus is in order.

You see, Time-Warner, AOL's parent company has been looking to unload the money-sink that is AOL for a couple years now. Apparently, there is some kind of deal in the works as AOL needs to shave-off all the 'dead weight' to make itself more palatable to any buying offer. Thus, the blog properties (among many others, I'm sure) are all whacked.

The original story was reported by TechCrunch (a far better presentation than the whacked-out SL Herald by far):
Headline: AOL Makes Big Budget Cuts Across Blogs (Updated)
An alleged blogger from one of AOL's blog property "Joystiq" - which is the umbrella company running Massively:
"Obviously, I can’t give my name (and it’s not the name on this account, either), but as a writer for one of the blogs in AOL’s Weblogs, Inc. Network, I can tell you that the cuts are going pretty far beyond free fucking bagels. Pardon my language, but what we’re going through for these sites is beyond anything that could possibly be considered reasonable."

So, Tateru, where will you go? Screw Massively. You're like that perfect barber a guy finds and utterly goes into panic mode when they retire, sweating bullets (ladies, I do not joke.) So, please do make it known where ever it is you choose to make your new blogging home, should you choose to continue with news reporting at all. Hey, I can't pay you, but you're welcomed here! ;)

As for all you other readers: I'll be sure to let you know when I track her ass...er... blog articles down wherever their new home is and report it here. As for the AOL shake-up regarding their blogging properties, waddayathink?

Read the TechCrunch source, with updated response by ex-blogger here
blog comments powered by Disqus

Blackthorne™ ≠ inSL

Search This Blog

SL Grid Status

Mundane History