Storms A Brewing

Turning Leaves
July 16, 2009

Skywatchers know that when the leaves turn a storm is a brewing! Thursday afternoon the leaves once again turned and that night we were hit with yet another storm. A prudent person pays attention to the signs of storms brewing whether it be weather or in some other aspect of their lives and acts accordingly. The young and/or foolish person does not. The biggest news in the blogosphere is the 'sale' of Entrecard to ZipRunner Inc. Now technically this wasn't a sale it was an acquisition due to a default note despite what former owner Graham Langdon says. Storms have been brewing at Entrecard for quite some time!

It definitely was time for Graham to leave Entrecard! Like a comedy of errors combined with an immature egotistical joke of the day, ex-members and members alike tuned in just to see what stupid thing he could come up with next. I honestly don't think he realized what a joke he had become in the blogosphere! He even bragged about being homeless and how much he enjoyed sleeping on a park bench. Now tell me what founder of a business they are trying to sell for a million dollars would even make mention of that? Then and one of his biggest downfalls was he played in Photoshop® changing his ad using filters. A EC member made a comment on Twitter regarding Graham's hat along with calling him an 'asshat'. Now Twitter has nothing to do with EC yet Graham went into overdrive, banned the member and put out a new rule that EC members could not say anything negative about EC on any forum, social network or blog or else they would be banned earning him the reputation of being a Nazi. This censorship did not sit well with members who either made it known vocally or quietly left. As if he had the right to tell others what they could say outside of EC. Well, from there it went from bad to worse!

He was making very poor business decisions that drove away a lot of good bloggers by running unauthorized paid ads on blogs and dictating where the widget had to be placed on blogs. Mind you as long as the content agrees with the TOS of your ISP and blog host, no one has the right to tell you what to put on your blog or where you should put it. In the past three months under Graham's guidance Entrecard lost one third of its traffic. That is a fairly large chunk of traffic to lose! There has been some speculation that some of these bloggers might return now that Graham no longer owns entrecard however with his announcement that he is staying on as advisor (possibly untrue) I doubt many will return. In fact on the July 17 Entrecard blog post by Andrew Te of ZipRunner he politely thanks Graham and while he specifically acknowledges that Phirate with stay on with Entrecard makes absolutely no mention of Graham remaining as an advisor. What I find interesting is Graham doesn't even have an EC widget on his new blog! It is more likely Graham blowing a bit of smoke than a reality that he will be staying as an advisor. What investor who gets a company through a default note would keep the person responsible on as an advisor? If Andrew does keep Graham as part of the management team it will be Graham's continued association with EC that will hurt the new ownership. ZipRunner would be well advised to cut all ties with Graham. The reality is the very bloggers that Entrecard depends on for its success want Graham gone! At any rate they have an awful lot of damage control and damage repair to do. Any signs of being wishy washy, showing lack of respect for their members, making rule changes without notice, excessive censorship or any of the other nonsense that has been going on in the past will show Andrew Te to be no better than Graham so EC will continue its rapid downward spiral. Don't forget under Graham's management EC has lost 1/3 of its traffic over the last 3 months. Now ZipRunner will have to earn that traffic back. Time will tell at how successful they are at that. I wish Andrew the best and hope that they can turn EC into what it was meant to be.

In the meantime there are many questions regarding the credits members have earned. It has already been noted that new members and those who did not sign-up for the cashout prior to the acquistion by Zip Runner will not be eligible for cashout. This is bound to tick-off a lot of people who have spent hours and I do mean hours dropping cards to build up points to cash out. These are people that went into a que under Graham's system and have been sitting for weeks waiting for approval for cashout eligibility. At the same time members are still complaining as late as today of unapproved paid ads running on their blogs. This is not a good way for the new ownership to start off!

Would I put my 5 blogs back into the Entrecard system? I was with Entrecard from almost the start. I saw its downward spiral. At my peak usage I was dropping 450+ per day spending upwards of 4 hr daily spread throughout the day depending on my connection speed. When I left Entrecard (reason here) I suddenly felt very relieved despite the fact they continued to spam me and refused to remove my blogs I found I enjoyed blogging more. There is a life outside of Entrecard! More importantly my traffic has increased while my bounce rate has decreased. It has taken me less than 3 months to build up a higher quality of traffic than Entrecard was providing and that's across all 5 blogs. So unless Entrecard dramatically changes under the new management and there is no association with Graham Langdon, no I would not return to Entrecard. See the way Entrecard is currently designed all that dropping takes away from adding precious content to your blog. Without content you don't get traffic. Without traffic you don't get readers.

For those interested in who ZipRunner Inc. is, here are the details:

ZipRunner Inc company information:
Company name : ZipRunner Inc
Number : C2322843
Date Filed : 12/12/2000
Status : Active
Jurisdiction : California
Address : 2168 S Atlantic BLVD #232, Monterey Park, CA 91754
Agent for Service of Process : ANDREW H TE, 2168 S Atlantic BLVD #232,
Monterey Park, CA 91754

Garden Gnome
©2006-2009