BlogExplosion : Not much change

I’m sorry that I haven‘t given out much information recently. There is nothing new to say. The numbers for surfing come and go and there is a spammer in the forums. Like I said, nothing new. Unfortunately, if you can’t surf properly you can’t earn credits and your blog won’t be seen. Those that do manage to surf for a while quickly run out of blogs to see. Today, for the first time ever I’ve noticed that the banner space (top right-hand corner) was empty.

The good news is that despite not having clicked on any numbers, my blog was put onto the Blog Rocket. Normally you need to have surfed a couple of sites before getting let on. So if you want people to see your blog try the Blog Rocket.

BlogExplosion: I hate to say this…

I’ve sent the letter below to the ‘administrator’. I was going to send it to liveUniverse via the contact form, but the webside does not appear to be working at the moment. I’m going to keep an eye on the forums for a while but I don’t see much point in approving blogs for nothing.  Has anyone got any ideas?

My letter:

“As you might be aware since there was a server change over for BlogExplosion the numbers to click on while members are surfing are more often than not, not there. This has caused problems for members who don’t have a stock of credits. They can’t surf to earn credits which means that their blogs are not seen by other members. Many members have given up trying. Anyone who keeps an eye on their statistics can see that the number of visitors from Blogexplosion are right down. I’m sure that advertisers who are paying for exposure on BlogExplosion will have noticed the difference too. Would it be possible to look into this problem?

We’ve also had a problem with a spammer on the forum. A few members have tried to rectify this. Many members just avoid the forum and the rest that visit aren’t contributing at all.

I don’t think that it would take much effort to rectify these problems for those that know how to do this. Word would soon get round and members would start coming back again.”

I really hope that I’m wrong

BlogExplosion: Approval waiting time down

As I’m writing this, this evening, the waiting time for approving blogs is down to 24 days ! We’ve made an extra large effort over the past week to get through the approvals. If your blog seems to have taken longer it could be because it has been put back into the queue. Sometimes there is doubt, sometimes in my case, I’m not sure about some of the technical blogs, so I put them back into the queue for the other approvers to see.

As I’ve been busy approving this week I haven’t had much time to see for my self about the lack of surfing numbers. I’ve tried surfing just now and the numbers are there. There haven’t been any complaints about this in recent days, but I don’t know if this means things are better or not. One thing is for sure that the stats for my blogs are well down at the moment. I just hope that we haven’t lost too many members because of this.

Visitors to the forums might have noticed that a member wasn’t too happy about remarks made about her blog. Please remember that BlogExplosion was designed with bloggers in mind; it is not for advertisers. At the end of the day after wading through blogs which shouldn’t be there and sometimes blogs that don’t exist anymore, my tolerance levels are pretty low. Having said that everyone is entitled to resubmit their blog, but please read the reason why. Sometimes it’s because the blogger hasn’t posted for a couple of months, not difficult to rectify at all!

Whatever the problems you come across I don’t think that there is any one to deal with tickets. Better to post something in the forums and get help and advice that way. It’s nice when people pop by to say hello anyway, the forums are pretty quiet at the moment.

Where is BlogExplosion going now?

The main problem at the moment is the loss of the numbers to click on while surfing. They do seem to come and go, so please keep trying. Refreshing the page will give you a new blog to read, but you won’t add credits. If you look in the forums you will find a thread under general announcements called ‘A letter sent to Live Universe’. This is an old thread, but recently members have been toying with the idea of writing to Google to see if they are interested in taking over BlogExplosion. Okay, this might not appeal to some, but could it get any worse than it is at the moment?

The waiting time to get your blog approved is still around 6 weeks. As I’ve said several times; 90% of what is in the queue shouldn’t be there. As one approver wrote recently, she almost holds a party when she comes across a genuine blog.

Again we seem to be waiting for something to happen….

BlogExplosion: Problems logging in and surfing

Update
Perhaps I was too quick off the mark. It seems that the problem has now been fixed by an administrator. It will be interesting to see what happens next…

If you’re reading this chances are that you’ve come through Google or book- marked my blog for future reference. As I write some members cannot log in and if they do they are unable to surf. We are trying to find out what is going on, but as there is no administrator it’s very difficult. You should be able to log into the forums and even if you can’t log in, you can read the threads. We’re trying to keep them as up to date as possible. Please DO NOT send in a support ticket – there is no one to deal with them.

The good news is that, by chance a few days ago, I managed to find the names of some of the people at LiveUniverse that we wrote to last year. I’m not sure how many of them are still there. As some of you know as long ago as last September there were reports that LiveUniverse were unable to pay some of their employees. I’m going to try sending messages to them via LiveUniverse

I think it goes without saying don’t buy any credits or banner impressions for the time being. If you paid using PayPal and want to get your money back you probably can – it certainly works like that on eBay.

What you can do to help
Spread the world! Post on your blog about what is happening, you can copy parts of this post if you like – I don’t mind. Ask other members that read your post to spread the word too. I’ll try to keep you updated on my blogs and the forums should be pretty active if the last few hours are anything to go by

Hopefully normal service will be resumed as soon as possible

BlogExplosion update

For those not involved with BlogExplosion sorry but this isn’t an interesting post.

A lot of us have been trying to get in touch with Live Universe who are the owners of blogexplosion. We’ve tried telephoning (not ringing), contact forms (no replies so far) and emails (no replies so far). We know from different sources that Live Universe haven’t been paying their employees either. If anyone still has the list of contacts we used last year to pester them please could you post them on the forums.

There is no one in charge of administration at the moment. The last administrator disappeared, possibly because he couldn’t get back into the system. There are still a few of us approving blogs. Unfortunately as I write we’re back to 6 weeks wait. 90% of the blogs in the queue shouldn’t be there anyway.

On behalf of those of us left approving please could anyone else who has access find a few minutes to approve 10 or so blogs from time to time. The more of us there are the easier it is all around. I know that a lot of you would like to help too, but we don’t have a way to let you in to the system.

If you have time a word of support on the forums would be lovely. If anyone can think of how we can contact Live Universe we’d be grateful

To finish on a positive note, there are several members who have made it known that they’d like to buy BlogExplosion. Hopefully soon something will start to move again and the mess can be sorted out.

Another BlogExplosion update

You will probably come across this post on one of my other blogs:

A couple of times now the approval queue has been right down to zero. It was a strange sensation after all this time. Some of you might have noticed that your blogs were approved almost instantly! We worked very hard to get the approval queue down to a minimum. Despite all the best efforts sometimes bad blogs do get through. If you see something which offends or you think shouldn’t be there you can report the site. You’ll see the link just below the banner at the top of the page when you are surfing.

Badmin continues working quietly to fix and change things. Lots of people enjoyed the Shoutbox in the past and hopefully there will be some sort of text based chat coming soon.

The forums have been very quiet recently, why not pop by and see what there is on offer nowadays? There are new bloggers saying ‘Hi’ or details of the assigned credits bonus during the month of May. If you have any ideas, worries about BlogExplosion or general questions about blogging there is always someone around willing to help out. We’d love to hear what you think about the changes.

BlogExplosion: very Important!!

A letter has been composed for everyone to send out to the company that owns Blogexplosion on 20th February, you can copy the letter from here.

Or you might prefer to go here for more instructions and access to a rich text format of the letter. I think anyone outside the US would probably like to send their letters a little earlier. The addresses are supplied. Just pick who you would like to address your letter to.

There is no reason why you shouldn’t compose your own letter if you want to. Please be polite. A lot of effort has gone into this project by people who care about the blogging community. If you belong to BlogExplosion, please help.

And yes, you will be seeing this post on all of my blogs

Thanks to thewatchlist, MJTaylor Spicybugz, bokonon, kelson, SelinaKimsey, sightlydrunk, bluegrassBloggo, McSpazz, lando411 and others I have surely missed for keeping the forums looking like forums. A special thanks to thewatchlist and MJTaylor who have put in all of the work for the letter.