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By Beth Wellington

bethwellingtonLong moderator’s note—David speaking: How much should we entrust our lives online to Yahoo, Google, Facebook, MySpace and the rest?

To what extent should we build our search-engine ranks around Web addresses tied to multibillion-dollar corporations? I urge you to register and use your own domain name if you’re not already.

That way, you can easily move to other servers if need be with your Web identity intact.

Close to home, I actually encourage TeleBlog contributors to reproduce the same posts in their own blogs.

A cautionary example: The Writing Corner blog

Doubt the wisdom of the above? Check out a Yahoo 360 post below, dated Nov. 2, from Beth Wellington, a poet-writer-activist in Virginia whose clueful blog on politics and culture has drawn tens of thousands of page views since ’05. But the Writing Corner blog means squat to Yahoo. The company’s 360 beta is shutting down, and Beth will no longer be able to blog at the same URL despite the online following she’s built up.

“I am invisible to those who follow the next bright trendsetter, like moths seek flames,” she wrote in the Corner. “I wasn’t invited to test Yahoo’s new product, ‘Mash.’ I rate not a blip on the radar screen of Yahoo’s recently hired ‘Community Manager.’”

Beyond just a Beta issue

Even without a “beta” involved, I’d still regard this as a cautionary example backing up one from David Faucheux, the blind librarian whose AudioBlogger links suddenly stopped working until I called it to the attention of the service’s new owner. With AudioBlogger dead, he can no longer use it to record his MP3s over the phone. I hope he can eventually resume the recordings another way.

The good news in Beth’s case is that a fellow 360 user named Joseph Dunphy invited her to try out the new Mash service. Great! As both a fan of her writings, however, and someone who slightly knew her from eons ago (Jewish moms, blind date and all that), I still hope Beth registers and blogs under her own name. And if she’s able to show up here, too, on relevant topics, then so much the better! – David Rothman

360 Will Be Closing (11/02/07)

By Beth Wellington

My readers know Yahoo sometimes ate my entries. It especially disliked any link to Sourcewatch.org. It drove Technorati bonkers. I thought it was Sourcewatch and Technorati.

Then this week, the indexing on Yahoo became really odd. My most recent post appeared to be one or another in August or, once, one in early September. The home page gave the correct name for the latest entry but linked back to something else. Sometimes, when I tried to edit an entry, it completely disappeared. I knew how to work around this stuff, but still. I decided to file a my first feedback form. I only received notice of the closing when I got back the “so, we ain’t gonna fix it” form letter.

How I ended up at Yahoo 360

I’ve been asked by the more technically inclined, “Out of curiosity, why did you choose Yahoo 360 for your blogging platform? ” In August 2005, I knew nothing about blog platforms and little about html. The novelist John Dufresne had a blog for which I culled news on Cindy Sheehan, when the story was first breaking and there weren’t millions of posts. My daily habit was to read the news, find John a link and send it.

One morning, I had completed my self-imposed task, but John had temporarily shut down his blog while enroute to teach for the fall semester in Austin.

August 22: We’re on the road…might even get out of Florida if we drive real late. So I’ll be out of commission till we get a cable or DSL or whatever we get in Texas.

I saved the links in an email draft and a couple days later noticed the blog capacity at Yahoo. How easy. The formatting followed that of the email account I had used ever since Bill Gates bought Hotmail and I had abandoned my account. Hotmail no longer worked well with Netscape and was inundated with those offers on how I could enlarge my penis.

My first three posts to this dully-named blog on politics and culture were “September in DC: Mobilize against Iraq and for Sustainability (8/24/05),” “Pat Robertson and Venezuela (08/25/05),” and “Reject John Roberts (8/26/05).” The next two reviewed Ed Falco’s novel Wolf Point and Tim Robbins’s play, “Embedded. “ I was hooked.

But, until my limited syndication on Newstrust, I used my blog mainly to organize internet research for print journalism. I had readers, over 211,00 since January 2006, but almost no one commented. Yahoo required you to enroll for your own 360 page first. I can think of only one person who did not know me in person or had not received an email from me alerting them to an entry or had not seen my writing in another venue. This one-and-only Yahoo-generated commenter was a troll, displeased with my rundown of gun legislation in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings. And I can’t even be sure this comment was Yahoo-generated, as there was a link to the blog from the guest column Conor Kenny has solicited for Congresspedia.

Why I stayed

So what kept me here, as other platforms clearly surpass it? Inertia. The desire to write new posts, rather than take time to learn new formatting, to transfer old entries and graphics to a new site. Besides 360 was in BETA. For a while, the company added bloglike functions–blog rolls, highlighted entries, a calendar index, tags– and I thought it would continue to improve the product.

Beside, I didn’t really want to split my content between two sites. And a corporate buyout can mess things up when you choose your platform. Take Google’s purchase of Blogspot. I know of one local user, less technically adept than even I, who couldn’t figure how to submit his blog posts, once Google launched a new version after the purchase. Rather than seek help, he started anew. And, then, after a time, since he wasn’t posting under the old blog, those entries vanished–his beautiful photos and okay poetry are now history. And when LLRX.com changed to a new platform, the transition misdated many of my earlier columns and thus has no index for them in the correct issue.

Not a blip on the radar screen of the “Community Manager”

Though I have a following and have been cited for quality by Newstrust, Congresspedia, novelist John Dufresne, etc., I never used 360 as a social network. Most folks I meet in real life. Those of interest on the internet, I email. I turn down 360 invites, especially from the necked girl sites : ) or those that link there. Thus, although this is the 1,125 page I’ve posted, I rate low in the Yahoo corporate firmament. I am inaudible to those listening for the “buzz” of social networking. I am invisible to those who follow the next bright trendsetter, like moths seek flames. I wasn’t invited to test Yahoo’s new product, ” Mash.” I rate not a blip on the radar screen of Yahoo’s recently hired “Community Manager.” I hear he’s seeking advice from(suggestions on how to placate?) veteran 360 users. I would like to be in on the discussion of 360′s “transition.” Tell him to write me.

After blogging almost daily since August 2005 and picking 360 since it was easy to transition from the email program, I’m wishing I had chosen another platform. Sigh. Sure hope there will be a way that those who come to the URL for my blog can be redirected. The idea of how many places I have to go online to change that information manually is discouraging.

Note: Beth’s original post—while it’s still up—is here. I’ve also inserted subheads. – David Rothman

Related thought from David: I’ve raised the point before. When will the Internet Archive offer a comprehensive blog backup service (if need be, for a subscription fee)? I love the idea of a nonprofit, interested in the long-term, being involved.

And a lesson at the personal level: Beth’s blog is addictive for Washington junkies of a certain mind—-politics filtered my way most of the time (you’re welcome to disagree). I should have owed up to my presence among her readers and have reached out earlier to Beth to help her rescue The Writing Corner. I just felt I’d have been intruding, after all those years. Mistake. Beth was delightful to talk to after I finally e-mailed and chatted with her; and who knows, perhaps she can eventually meet Mrs. TeleBlog and me when she’s back in Northern Virginia.

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