I just found out that the network that I think has a lot of potential (and has helped bloggers like me) says goodbye to its members.
BlogRush is one of the promising start-up in late 2007.
The main idea is wonderful – sharing the blog contents among members, thus increasing visibility for the blog posts. This, in additional to the unique system of traffic referring has helped good bloggers with even ore visibility.
Unfortunately, as I learn from the BlogRush website, many game the BlogRush system, and some other hack the systems – all in all, resulting in an inconsistent system.
Here is to highlight the statement by John Reese, the owner of BlogRush:
BlogRush didn’t grow without its fair share of problems — from security issues to abusive users trying to ‘game’ the system to much lower click-rates than expected. We also had some problems with trying to fairly control the quality of the network, and in the process made many mistakes in deciding what blogs should stay or go. All of these issues, ultimately, limited the service’s full potential.
Another case study of big Internet start-up failure
This is another case of big Internet start-up failures – the saying ‘In great power, lies great responsibilities’ is fulfilled, again and again – the bigger you are, the more people try to take advantage of your system and test the depth of your team.
Today’s survivors – Digg, Facebook and the likes are put under constant challenge and thrive – that’s why their market values are sky-high.
Lessons learned from the BlogRush case
Lesson learned: If you are becoming big, fit the best people you can get into your business. Better yet, hire the best techie whenever possible to close loopholes and thwart threats.
John Reese stated in the BlogRush website, that BlogRush has received offers of acquisition – perhaps, that day, he should sell the business?
Another lesson learned: A great serial entrepreneur doesn’t always be a great business developer.
I read stories about new millionaires, some of them are teenagers, that build sites or applications that cater the social part of the Internet, such as MySpace. They don’t want to sell the business to the big(ger) guys and want to hang on to their online business longer, even as long as they can.
I’m not saying it’s a bad choice, but it will become a bad choice if you can’t maintain the traffic and the potential well. Some people are good at starting up and growing up the business from within, some other don’t.
And indeed, some of them fail and some other have their online business dropped in traffic.
Assess your strengths and weaknesses, and decide according to them, not on what you think is ideal.
Ivan Widjaya
A sad BlogRush fan