April 23, 2009
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Featured System Overhaul
I recently sent out a message to all of my friends, many of which I knew had been featured multiple times, asking how many times they’d been featured. I then took their answers and compiled them into a list containing their Xanga birth year, and the number of times they’ve been featured.
The List
Member since 2003, featured 3 times;
Member since 2003, featured 7 times;
Member since 2004, featured 5 times;
Member since 2004, featured 6 times;
Member since 2004, featured 3 times;
Member since 2005, featured 2 times;
Member since 2005, featured 2 times;
Member since 2005, featured 0 times;
Member since 2005, featured 0 times;
Member since 2005, featured 4 times;
Member since 2007, featured 0 times;
Member since 2007, featured 7 times;
Member since 2008, featured 2 times;
Member since 2008, featured 0 times;
Member since 2008, featured 0 times;
Member since 2008, featured 2 times;
Member since 2008, featured 15 times. (can you guess who?)
Now, in response to my message, many of the people who had not been featured were not all that interested in being featured, and some of the people who had been featured said it was no big deal for them. But that’s a tad beside the point.
I feel that the Xanga homepage should contain blogs about anything and everything, and should include everyone. I asked a few of my relatives in an email to go to the Xanga homepage (www.xanga.com) and tell me what their impression was, and what they thought Xanga was all about. A select few noticed the homepage quote that says “Xanga is a blogging community” and gave that as their answer, while others took a moment to look around the homepage, check out the featured content, and make an educated guess as to what Xanga is. The general consensus? “Xanga is a place where professional writers share their work with each other.”
“Professional” was the answer I was expecting, actually. The featured section of Xanga is a list of all the best of the best of the best writers of Xanga, and their professionally written, wildly hilarious, deeply inspiring, publishable works of literary art. But is that what Xanga is all about? No. Xanga is a place where anyone and everyone can and should come to type out their pains, frustrations, joys, and odes of happiness. A place where anyone, not just professional writers, can come to share the stories of their day to day lives, or write comedic works of fiction, or just mash their keyboards in a fit-of-frustration rant about nothing the rest of the world even cares to hear. But when I browse the featured section, I think the same thing my friends and family thought.
The “featured section overhaul”? Put everyone up there. I’m not begging to be featured myself, I’m just really sick of seeing the same people, the same “well written” content, and the same “bait and switch” titles in the featured list all the time. Xanga is not just for professional writers, nor is it a place for journalists to commentate on current events. It’s for EVERYONE, and I honestly think that the featured section should represent the vast diversity of writing styles and reasons that exist on Xanga. There’s teens ranting about the oppression of their parents, there’s poets, there’s journalists, there’s comedians and artists. Feature EVERYBODY.
Do you agree, or disagree?
How many times have you been featured?
Is it a big deal to you?Thanks for all the comments! I’m really glad this was featured, because now I know how others feel about all this.
Comments (93)
As I told you in a message, I have been on the Top Blogs page several times but never featured on the first page at the top. I think the first post I ever noticed on Top Blogs was a Gazebo Post I did showing off a Gazebo I had bought my wife one Valentines Day. I was bumfuzzled that this was on Top Blogs. But after that it seemed every other post I did made it to Top Blogs usually between 40 and 50. I think I had one go as high as 8 one time and it didn’t stay there long. If what I write gets featured or Top Blogged I don’t really care one way or the other. Sure, there are some posts I wish would be featured, but I’m not the type to try to get it featured, if it gets featured fine, if not fine. I more enjoy the release of meeting new folks I would never have been able to meet before. Thats what I like about Xanga, sometimes you meet someone and feel like you have known them all your life, then others are nice and you make friends, but there just isn’t the connection you feel with some. It’s always amazed me at how that works.
Xanga features bigger bloggers because they consistently churn out good content, and when thexangateam finds a good post by an obsolete blogger, it DOES get featured. I’ve seen a lot of people get featured recently who average 2 comments per post, and the posts that get featured are the same (until they get featured). The bigger bloggers aren’t nessesarily better writers than the bloggers who aren’t “xangalebrities”, but they have an audience, so more people are likely to recommend, and even if their post doesn’t get featured, they can still get more comments on a post than some people get on their featured posts. The difference between the big bloggers and the little ones isn’t the writing, it’s the drive to have their material read. It’s not fair that more small bloggers don’t get featured, that’s true. If they had an audience, getting featured wouldn’t be hard at all. Nobody understands this. “Why can’t they just FEATURE this post by this girl? She’s really good, even better than Dare2BDiferentt.” Why doesn’t she leave some comments so people will visit her site and SEE the post? It can’t get featured if only two people know about it, John or Dan has to know about it to feature it. That’s the way it works. You have to try. You can get fifty people to read your post quicker than I typed this comment. Xanga doesn’t feature everybody because not everybody has content worth reading.
Oh, and it’s going to get worse, with this stupid new idea to let people make their own Xanga Network Sites, like Mancouch and Datingish. There’ll only be like two posts from actual Xangans featured at one time.
Very insightful post!
BTW, Ahhhh I sent you one of the messages…and I should mention that I was here since 2001 but under a different name.
Josh, I think I’m up there now for my Wallyworld one. I’ve been up there alot of times and I don’t even know how they pick me? I really am clueless about it but it does make me happy when I see myself on there but I think it’s only fair that they get everyone up there at least once before we get up there again.
I dunno, the few times I’ve been featured, there’s no way anyone could consider me a professional writer. I mean, my last featured post was about velociraptor awareness day!
Really it’s more about selling out. The way to get featured is literally beg your readers for recommends, then beg those who came via other recommends to also recommend. eventually you’ll get featured, no problem.
@Dare2BDiferentt - My real question here is what makes anything posted to Xanga not worth reading? Why are only good stories and posts featured? These questions may sound ridiculous, and I really don’t know how to put what I mean into words, but I guess what I’m trying to say is that the featured section should represent the wide variety of good/bad/ugly writers who choose to use Xanga. (and for the record, John and Dan both added me as a friend before I knew who either of them were).
@jillcarmel - A-FRICKIN-MEN. My point exactly.
@DrugInducedDuck - That velociraptor post was fantastic, and most of your posts are. The raptor post was medium length, very well written, included a picture, and made it’s readers laugh hysterically. Good content deserves featuring, but I just think that once your featured once, you’ll have a fairly decent reader base because of it, and Xanga should feature people who don’t already have good reader bases (if that makes sense) before they feature somebody a second, third, or fifteenth time.
I totally think Xanga needs to feature different kinds of people. It is so one sided sometimes and they never show fferent people’s opinions. It seems to me that the same people get featured over and over, it’s rediculous and not fair to the less popular Xangans.
My response to this is a little bit mixed. First off, I agree that we need more variety in Xanga posts. Right now what gets widely recommended all too often simply appeals to the lowest common denominator or else substitutes generic good feelings for powerful, nuanced writing.
That said, I do think that some of the people who never get featured simply aren’t very good writers. Let’s admit it – if you’ve ever browsed Xanga randomly, odds are you have come across some sites where it appears that the author doesn’t really know English or only posts when they’re completely drunk. These sites, I think, probably aren’t what we want to feature.
The problem is that the middle ground is hard to adjust. If there are few responses on a post, does that necessarily mean it shouldn’t be featured? I once got lots of responses on an esoteric post about Bayesian statistics in quantum mechanics; does this mean it should be featured?
I’m intrigued by your statement about Xanga being a place for professional writers. I do consider a lot of my output professional quality, as that is my caliber as a writer, but I do not consider my entire site to be of that quality. My site is just a personal blog.
I think the entire popularity system the revolves around xanga should be taken away. That includes recommendations as well as featured posts. Blogging should be about writing. Not seeing how many people you can impress or how famous you can get. I was featured once, it was a post I put no thought into.
Great post. So far I have only been featured once and everytime I had tried after that my posts never get featured. Do I care about it? Well, I would like to be featured again because I like writing and I like hearing peoples opinions, but I honestly don’t care about being popluar on here.
I think being featured sometimes would be nice. Some of my posts I write I really like and I would like to share with everyone else. I don’t care about being featured all the time, but some of my posts I think are really good I would like to be featured.
I wouldn’t say the featured section is for professional writers. I find some of those very sloppy (including some of my own that got featured). I would like to see more prose and poetry featured, since I think there are enough fans. I would rather not see blogs about what a thinspo had to eat, or random rants about nothing myself, but if Xanga did feature that I would not particularly care.
I’ve been featured three times. The first was through an ISH site within 2 weeks of starting here. That one was very personal and had a message about abuse. It was nice to see but being new, I had no idea what that was all about. We came on here to blog our writing and read others. Have a debate or two and be challenged by others with their thoughts and opinions. It’s grown from there. We blog about feelings, opinions, silliness, sarcasm, poetry and excerpts of our novel. One day while being in a silly mood I took a comment I made to hubby and wrote a sarcastic blog about public toilets. That made my 2nd Feature. Last week I thought about how people want to be someone else some days and Feature number 3 was born. I’ve been Featured for abuse, toilets and shoes! Were the last 2 Feature worthy? Eh. Cute, yes but not great!
I’ve learned that if you find someone who has written something impactful or just downright hilarious, then rec them. Then go to the home page and submit them for Feature. Spread the word. If the Featured page needs changing (which it does) then bring the smaller/midsized writer to John’s attention.
Someone is always going to be hurt when they spend hours pouring their hearts out and get ignored. Like other parts of life, it’s going to happen. Give John your ideas on how it can be changed. We are a community after all. If he doesn’t get ideas, then he can’t make the changes.
I really don’t look much at the featured because I am on xanga to get in with the community and enjoy my time here with my xanga friends. Being featured would be nice but not a necessity.
The featured system hinges off the dynamic between a small fraction of Xangans who have established hundreds of connections with other Xangans who are likewise situated on this particular piece of the blogosphere. I agree with Paul_Partisan in that those featured aren’t always the best bloggers Xanga has to feature. Sometimes, though, such blog entries offer a great deal in the way of advice, humor, or a simple anecdote about the blogger’s day. I think the reason why so many of the same Xangans get featured is that they commit so much time in not only establishing connections with other Xangans but also promoting each other and becoming part of the blogging lives of one another.
Personally, I don’t have time available to spend doing that. I would like to be featured, more for my photography than my writing but either would be fine by me. But I don’t think I could sustain it like some people do and I think that is key to succeeding in getting featured not just once but often.
I don’t see how Xanga can feature everyone. There are millions (no kidding, look at the stats) of bloggers on Xanga. Now, many are inactive or very sporadic in their blogging but featuring everyone is not possible. I think we can go about finding quality blogs in the old-fashioned way: crawling through numerous blogs both at random and at the suggestion of other Xangans, and subscribe to those who we most enjoy. Xanga is only about popularity and getting featured if you let it be.
@Dare2BDiferentt -
I agree with everything you said.
Feature the active Xangans, perhaps.
And I’ve been featured once on Xanga, once on Revelife and once on Momaroo. No big deal.
@vwagenjetta - I don’t see where that’d solve anything. Putting random people on the front page just because nobody ever gets a bad blog featured wouldn’t solve anything. People complain now that Xanga features worse articles than it did, say, two years ago, which is right about the time I came along. If they featured posts that talk about “my bf broke up with me and now I’m pissed, but here’s how it all went down…” stuff like that should NOT be featured. It makes people leave because featured gets worse and worse. Getting featured is easy: leave a lot of comments or send a lot of friend requests. Write a post worth being featured (<hardest part). After you get featured, continue as you were. I could go write a post and get featured RIGHT NOW, but I don’t have the time for that at the moment.
I set up a site on the 18th, and just to see if I could get 100 subs in a week, I joined some big blogrings, left some comments, sent out just a couple friend requests, and now it has about 107 subscribers, in a week. You could do that. It’s easy, and it just takes time. When you write something, write something that’s out there, that’s different, on a subject that nobody has covered, or that hasn’t been covered very much. Featured is easy if you stop being intimidated by it. And once you get featured, it doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t make you a rockstar, it doesn’t make you rich, and people only use your name to drive traffic to their site. It doesn’t change much over what your site already is, really.
Although, I did leave a comment the other day and the girl said it left her so excited that she texted her friend saying a “big Xangan” left her a comment. That was cool.
to be honest for a moment among moments, I stopped reading afear the second paragraph. What’s the big deal… I’ve been featured once… I do the featuring or however it goes. It means 0 to me with a capital 0. xanga is meant to write your feelings quick so they dont blow out the back of your head.
@bella_esperanza - I loved the book esperanza rising, i had to read it for young adult literature. Everyone who calls themself american should read this work of art, for it is so sobering and humbling for the American culture/ ideal. After read it you take not much for granted if you do have a heart.
@westernsoul@revelife - It’s an amazing book. I have it both in English and Spanish (and I’m neither American nor Spanish, haha). Anyway, thanks for commenting about this!
“My real question here is what makes anything posted to Xanga not worth reading?”
There are a lot of posts not worth reading on Xanga. It’d be like if a studio started releasing someone’s unedited home movies into theaters. People would eventually stop going to the movies. You’re basically asking Xanga to please everyone, which is impossible and a terrible business strategy.
“Why are only good stories and posts featured?”
I’m not sure what kind of answer you’re looking for here. Should they start featuring bad stories and posts?
Good/interesting/mainstream stories and posts draw more traffic, which means more money in Xanga’s pocket. Xanga may be about writing, but it’s a business first and foremost.
I’m curious – would you still feel this strongly about featured weblogs if YOU were featured before? This post just kind of seems like a subtle way of asking, “Why won’t they feature me?”
I’m honored to have been featured numerous times. I write for a living, and I was a journalism student in college, so I aim for an audience. When I write for other people, I’m also writing for myself, because I enjoy it so much. I’m sorry you’re “sick” of seeing me featured, but I won’t apologize for the fact that I can actually write a post that entertains or amuses people.
Good luck on your quest to get featured. I hope that will solve some of your issues with the status of the front page.
We feature a lot of posts from users with zero comments and zero subs. It often goes on to be very popular though, giving the impression that that user was popular all along.
Not sure what we can do to correct that impression…
Featuring this post!
Do you agree, or disagree?
I don’t know what you want people to agree with here – that we should get rid of well written blogs? Should it be randomized? I don’t know what works best here, and I’m not really sure if you are trying to say that we should feature more blogs that aren’t for most people, or more “average” blogs? You are making a proposal, but I’m not sure i follow.
How many times have you been featured?
Err, I’ve been around since 2003, and I’ve been featured on xanga 5 or so times now – and all of it’s been since the beginning of 2009.
Is it a big deal to you?
No. In many ways, the attention isn’t really that much fun. People who don’t know you come to what was previously a private blog and flame you, or insinuate that they know all sorts of things about you after you develop a large readership. It really changes the nature of blogging. Also, you end up with everything you say being suspect, because people assume that you are simply out to build up a big readership – rather than write for the love of writing. People can be pretty harsh.
@john - I think it’s a pretty well-balanced system – given the number of blogs on Xanga.
The things that get featured have a mostly universal appeal. They are things that a wide variety of persons will care about. You don’t see the day-to-day style personal blogs being featured, because people couldn’t care less if Johnny ate some apple pie, and then watched ghostbusters.
Is the system perfect? no. many things that i think are great don’t get featured, and many things i would never expect to get featured i later see on the front page. there’s a lot of good stuff, and they can’t feature it all. there’s probably 50 awesome posts written everyday, and yet they probably only feature 3.
and, they have the ‘recently updated’ section of explore to give a broader overview of the average xanga post, if you want to go read those.
@AnamcharaConcepts - I agree. If you see something you’d like featured, then submit it. they know they can’t see everything, so they kindly have given us this option.
I want to be featured if I write a worthy post that sparks discussion
to me i think that’s what being featured is all about. I mean you get to be on the front page for two days…
I would just rather them feature the actual users instead of the ish sites. The ish sites are almost all of the posts in the top box and 80% of the day an ish site is on top of the featured list. I think you would see everyone happier if the focus was back on the blogger. I think it would also lead to increase traffic.
I’m with @wherethefishlives - on this one. I’ve been featured once, and I can tell you its definitely NOT all that and a bag of chips, especially if you write something controversial or that is meant to be argumentative. Many of the people you are talking about featuring just aren’t ready for the backlash of annoyed people who were expecting something else altogether when they clicked over.
I don’t mean to hurt people’s feelings, but I really don’t want to read “OMG he broke up with me and now he’s sleeping with that skank…”
Its just not what I’m looking for. That’s an online journal and should be kept relatively private. I highly doubt they would want that on the front page for everyone and his brother to read. I for one would be absolutely mortified if something like that was plastered all over the front page for everyone to read. The trick is taking days like that and turning them into something worth reading. The mark of a good writer is someone who can take the day to day crap and make it funny/interesting/thought provoking.
And the people who have commented before me are right as well. You need to put in the work to make it to featured. Go through the metros and friend every person who has updated in the last week, comment the people you sub/friend to, and write stuff worth featuring. I’m not the best writer on the face of the planet, but I’m happy with the following I have (193 friends and 136 subscribers). I don’t have the time to devote to going around friending and subbing to everyone, which is probably a major contributing factor as to why I haven’t been featured more often, and I’m okay with that.
But those that put in the work deserve to have their stuff featured, plain and simple, especially compared to those that don’t. Anything else is simply not fair and it will drive traffic away from xanga, because the good ones will be sick and tired of competing with the crap ones for attention, and the rest of us will get sick and tired of reading the crap and follow the good ones to wherever they go.
I partly agree with your entry. I have noticed that xanga is always featuring the same people over and over, and it would be nice to get a variety of entries from different people with different writing styles (that includes those who are not professional writers and do not write for an audience, but for themselves) At the same time, a few years back, xanga did feature entries from all kinds of people, and a lot of these entries lacked depth and content. I feel like featured entries should have substance, otherwise it would be like reading a diary of a shallow, superficial 13 year old who can’t use proper grammar and enjoys complaining about everything under the sun. It would be nice not to have to see the same people get featured every other day. There are a lot of blogs out there that are very well-written, and no one would ever know about them unless they were featured. There’s a call for some kind of balance.
I dunno, I think they’re doing the best they can possibly do. The rest is really left up to the community and to venture out and find the better blogs ourselves, rec them, and of course send them in to be voted on. I hardly think everything on the front page is always “professional”…I think it covers a wide variety of thoughts, opinions, and content.
I’ve been featured about 15 or so times since July of 08…of course most of those were under my other name. And, I think I’ve been featured about 10 or so times on the ish sites.
I disagree. The best bubbles to the top. And it is definitely more about content. Too many times have I read featured content that contained tons of typos, incorrect grammar, and misspellings.
I would NOT enjoy reading commonplace crap. It’s the front page. If you want to read “everyone’s” work, lobby for a “random daily post” button or something.
I would hardly call all the featured posts “professional.” Not to say the writing isn’t good, some of it is, some of it isn’t. It’s the content that may come off as “professional” but even that isn’t really. All it is is a matter of particular topics being interesting(and even that is really subjective, most of the time it has to do with the content being merely “controversial”) and to be honest it gets really old, really fast. If you really think about it, xanga is kind of the last place most “professionals” go to have their blogs hosted. Xanga is too community-centric, which has its merits but also has its downsides such as this, I mean most of the featured posts/top blogs are all from the same people.
You can now let out a sigh of relief.
@Dare2BDiferentt - i agree. i’m so sick of hearing people complain about who’s getting featured. while it does seem a little repetitive sometimes (as to who’s getting featured), i really don’t think it’s that biased. there’s been a bunch of people getting featured lately that aren’t “xangalebrities”
I’ve only been featured once, and that’s ok with me. But I think you have a point. It would be nice to see maybe another list, one of randomly assorted blogs that didn’t “earn” the privalege by getting a lot of eprops. Kind of like how they had the “recenlty updated” list at one point.
Those are interesting stats. I’ve been on Xanga a long time and haven’t been featured. Not really that big of a deal…I don’t mind the same people being featured over and over again if their content is good, which it is most of the time.
I rarely find a particularly well written or “professional” piece in the featured content section (though, at times, I am happy to find good stories), so it was a bit of a shock to read this perspective. I will agree that for some reason there seems to be a lot of nose-stick-ups at having a personal blog rather than an entertainment-focused blog. So…with that, I agree. Still…professional writers? Really? Some, maybe, but only a smattering and even then I don’t think a lot of Xanga Featured content could ever be published. Maybe in a coffee table book…as a joke.
I dunno. You made good points, but then again…if any mediocre post could get featured…ehh…
I wouldn’t spend as much time browsing Xanga, let’s just leave it at that.
@kakyuu - hahaha, wow. I didn’t want to come off as harsh but yeah definitely agree, most featured would never be published, unless they published their work themselves.
Who is that one on the last of the list? Just curious.
@TheTheologiansCafe - I agree. Almost all of the featured posts of the ish sites are basically questions. I don’t know if it makes sense.
but… but… I like reading the good stuff!
Nah, I get what you’re saying (I assume you’re saying we’re not going to sacrifice quality here…) and it’s a good point.
Ehhhh, maybe not ALL the best of the best of the best writers. There are many “undiscovereds” out there. (Clearly not me, since I just made up a word.)
i’ve never been kissed… err, i mean never been featured…
but then again, my posts rarely have substance worth reading, so…
All you have to do is figure out the “featured formula.”
@TheTheologiansCafe - I’ve always wondered why the ISH sites don’t split the eprops or link the comments directly to the blogger’s comment box. If we didn’t let them use our material, they would die off. It’s only fair we get a cut.
I’ve been featured a couple of times (and been on since 2004), and I’m by no means a professional writer. I don’t even have a college degree. I know a lot of other people who have been featured as well, and the number of professional writers is pretty small. Quite a few of them are just high schoolers. I get your point, though, and featured content is the way it is for a reason. If it were more representative of a cross-section of Xanga, there’d be a lot of stuff on the home page that most people wouldn’t be interested in reading. That used to be the case. The current system consists largely of editorial-style pieces, but it focuses on things of interest to broad audiences. I think that a good topical discussion is better suited to being featured than, for example, a list of errands I ran today.
I believe there are so many other good blogs out there that have yet to been explored or featured. I have yet to be featured. When I first started xanga my only goal was to be featured but I realized writing in hopes of wanting to be featured changes my style of writing. It become false, something that isn’t me. It would still be nice to be featured but then I would have some strange mindset that I would have to update everyday to keep my readers or some crap like that.
bwahahaha…professional writers on xanga…bwahahaha…it’s coming up on may 1, homes. not april 1.
Honestly, I’m surprised your relatives thought that. I think that if I were to first happen upon the front page, just because of some of the topics, I wouldn’t think it was a community of professional writers. I don’t mean it in a negative way but really, some things are just silly and for fun. Also, the writing styles tend to be pretty casual. I emphasize again that I don’t mean this in a negative way and the casual nature is part of the appeal…if I want to read a “professional” article I’ll go read the Washington Post or something.
@MySecretLoveAffair - I’ve been featured about 15 or so times since July of 08…of course most of those were under my other name.
What’s your other name?
“Like OMG, Cindy totally gave Josh a handjob in class today!!! WTF? Hahaahha!
Weight: 98lbs
Intake: I had some air today
Mood: I feel so fat!”
You really want that kind of stuff to be featured?
No matter whats’s done to the featured system, people will never be satisfied.
Zero times featured.
In my own arrogance, I will say I’m the most frequent blogger to never get featured.
I’ve been featured once. At first, it seemed like a big deal, I always wanted it to happen. But it’s really not a big deal, and it’s not all fun and games. You lose alot of privacy when you’re put on the frontpage of a major blogsite.
I think Dare2BDifferent summed it up pretty well. Eventually they’ll get to everyone?
I liked your little chart, btw. Science!
Member since 2006, featured 0 times. It would be nice to have been featured, but I don’t really mind. Either way, I don’t divest enough attention to make my blogs feature-worthy, by my reckoning.
I do feel that the featured blogs tend to be revolving around the same old (esp. controversial) topics.
I completely agree.
I have never been featured, but if I ever was, it would be a freakin’ deal.
Yes, congrats to those who are always on the front page, but I think there are tons of other feature-worthy blogs out there that have not been discovered yet.
I think it’s really stupid that the Featured Blogs is based on what is most recommended/commented, since only the famous blogs or the blogs recommended by the popular bloggers get noticed. There is no variety on the front page of Xanga.
@Lithium98 - I don’t think that’s the kind of stuff he’s talking about. There are other bloggers out there that can write coherent sentences and do not count their calory intake every freaking day.
I agree.
I guess they just don’t get it.
I have never been featured. Im not really sure that I care to be. I would be upset if the featured section was changed. I dont always agree with the featured posts. I dont always think they are the best written ones. But overall, they are good posts to read when I have a few minutes and I have already gone through my subscriptions. I have found a lot of people that I enjoy reading through the featured posts. If they changed it to just random posts, I would probably stop reading the featured.
Perhaps, a ‘random’ section similar to the top blogs would be a better alternative to get more people on the front page rather than changing the featured section.
@muzical_writer735 - featured blogs are NOT based on most commented/recommended – that is top blogs. featured blogs are picked by the Xanga team.
I’ve been here since early 2005 and I have NEVER been featured.
I’ve been going back to read a lot of my older posts back in 2005 up to the present and I think…that my posts were definitely better than the ones being featured.
People today get featured for posting something totally ridiculous, something that doesn’t even make sense, something that isn’t even original, something that is all about sex, sex and more sex and god, where is the justice in all of that??!
And oh, to the author of this post…
This, this….
“The “featured section overhaul”? Put everyone up there. I’m not begging
to be featured myself, I’m just really sick of seeing the same people… Feature EVERYBODY”
….is PURE, just pure brilliant.
Thank you for making people aware of this.
hm. well, it looks to me like plenty of not-well-written blogs get featured. i don’t think there’s much that’s “professional” about what makes the front page. what’s “worth reading” is pretty subjective. whatever they featured, i’m sure SOMEONE finds it worth reading.
I’ve never been featured although I wished my post Veterinary Monopoly (click on title to view post) would have been featured as I thought it would be something the public would like to be aware of. It was infuriating to me, but luckily I found a good decent vet who catered more to his clients than to his own greed. I have, however, had several questions featured.
The thing is, Xanga is for everyone. Everyone can do all the things you mentioned above. But personally, I’d rather not see angry teens ranting about their mistreated lives on the front page. What I would like to see is well written blogs about topics I’m interested in. And by that I don’t mean just me, I mean it in a general sense. I’ve been featured 6 times since September 08, it used to be a big deal to me but not so much anymore. It’s cool, but I don’t freak out about it.
I think the front page is just fine how it is. But it’s never going to please everyone, no matter what changes are made.
Who was featured 15 times? Was it TheologiansCafe (he has to have been featured more than 15 times, & been on here longer than a year)? Or was it WheretheFishLives? I would enjoy being featured but after nearly six years of being on Xanga, I still don’t know how the hell one becomes featured…
@StewieIsMyHero - You bring up a good point. There are a lot of teen rants or anorexic support blogs that I wouldn’t care to see (though I would argue that I may have one of been the lame teen way back when I started my 1st Xanga…whoops) then again, there are a lot of Featured things like really lame “Question of the Day” like right now “Do you wear sunglasses in the summer months?” Who cares? But I guess it entertains some people…
@key19 - It was probably wherethefishlives.
i’ve been featured once, at the time i thought it was a big deal…now I am busy with life… lol i just put up a few blogs a week for my friends personal amusement
@key19 - wherethefishlives has been featured 15 times since April of last year. That’s more than once a month!! WTF? I think we all know who he is by now.
@Lithium98 - I say, “Why not.” lol. Okay, maybe not posts like that, but (and I hate to use myself as an example) I’ve written many feature-worthy blogs over the past 4+ years, and this is my first time being featured. I just think it’s really counter productive to feature the same people over and over, no matter how fantastic their blogs are. Once your featured, everyone who logs in on the Xanga front page knows who you are, has probably read your post, and if they were remotely interested in you, they subscribed, friended, commented, whatever. I just like to see first-time-featured people up there as often as possible.
I got featured once on Xanga front page (on this account, however this was my first user name phil_leafman)
A few times on the ish sites some of my entries were used.
@john -
Keep up the fantastic work.
THANK YOU. I may have mixed feelings about this, but I’m glad someone is questioning their system. I’ve never been featured and never tried to be featured (I’ve really got nothing worth being featured anymore…maybe a few years ago, yes (or on one of my old xangas, yes)… but anymore I don’t put out the blogs I used to)… but I completely agree. When I see the featured section it is more like professional writing… it’s good because they really are pulling some of the best, but sometimes I wonder what the other side of xanga’s like. What about those “less than stellar” posts? Do they mean absolutely nothing?
I’ve read a lot of posts made by friends or random strangers that move me just as much. I’m not complaining that xanga’s doing a bad job of picking good posts… just that it would be a little nice to see more diversity. It makes everyone else on xanga seem a little inferior to these people always making featured, in my opinion. We’re all here for similar reasons, so why pick out the best writers? It makes sense that they want that for the front page–who doesn’t respect something well-written?…but sometimes the writing ability isn’t as important as what’s being said.
I can’t say I don’t browse and enjoy the featured section, because I do… but it would be interesting to see the average post once and a while. Kind of like reading Post Secret instead of an article from a newspaper or magazine.
Btw, what happened to the “recently updated” section? Am I wrong in remembering there used to be one?
Wait. Those are the good ones?
You’re… You’re joking, right?
…Right?
I’m on the front page fairly often. I’m on it right now.
I’m not a professional writer by any means.
I’ve never been featured and never want to be. That’s not why I’m here.
I don’t think that featured content is always, “professionally written, wildly hilarious, deeply inspiring, publishable works of literary art.”
oh the irony of asking not to be featured!
Or maybe people could find another way to satisfy their hunger for attention if this one isn’t yielding. It’s a blogging community, yet everyone seems to feel it necessary to inject some sort of popularity contest where personal adequacy is contingent on the frequency of being featured.
@vwagenjetta - That’s all assuming your main goal on Xanga is to be featured in the first place. I mean, we’re all here for the attention right?
Whatever system anyone comes up with will never work because of the fact that there will always be a group people that don’t get noticed by those who select the posts. Ever since the inclusion of the Rec’ system, I’ve said we should get rid of the featured system entirely and just have a the top Rec’d posts cycling in it’s place. Xanga is a “blogging community”. Why not showcase what this community is currently blogging about?
Quote: “…professionally written, wildly hilarious, deeply inspiring, publishable
works of literary art“
Hilarious and deeply inspiring are subjective.
Publishable works of literary art they are not, but they are well written “essays.”
The front page of Xanga is clearly formatted to attract a particular range of audience and blogging interest. I think that many bloggers who came here a few years ago to share their art, poetry, politics, et al within a community would hesitate to join Xanga now by simple virtue of the front page theme. These bloggers would likely seek out more of a global forum elsewhere on the net. But that is ok. I have been here since 2003 and go directly through the sign in page to bypass the front page blurbs altogether; although, when I sign out they inevitably show up. And sometimes, like now, they are interesting to read.
Fortunately, being featured has never been an interest of mine or anyone I know personally on Xanga. Your reflection on the subject, however, is a good call to greater diversity, even though I have no stake in the matter nor I would I miss the blurbs for a second if they all disappeared tomorrow.
Peace
@muzical_writer735 - And even those people still don’t write anything feature worthy. Myself included. Then again, what qualifies as “featured worthy”? This is the XangaTeam’s site. They should be able to feature whoever they want. We’re lucky we get to give as much input as we do as far as how the site works. But, again, the final word is theirs. We just have to respect that.
OK – here’s my 2 cents worth….. I DO get discouraged and am at a point where I don’t even look at featured or top blog anymore. Reason – same old, same old. Same people are up there time and time again. Yes, some of the content is great, some good and some really not worth it.
Not sure what system is used to find ‘good content’ to feature but I also believe there are a lot of great bloggers falling through the gaps and not discovered nor their work featured or given an opportunity.
What would I like? I’d like to see different names (bloggers) with different content. Perhaps once a blogger has been featured – they cannot be featured again for a month (or whatever) that way giving the rest of the xangan population a chance.
@john - from your stats, what percentage of traffic to xanga uses the xanga home page as a entry portal or visit it regularly?
@JadedJanissary - Is it a big deal to you? No. I share many of your sentiments.
@vwagenjetta - much of featured posting is attention whoring done by calculated manipulation of the system to generate traffic to a site.There are also known topics that generate controversy framed in certain manners that has a high likelyhood of being featured.
If I had a real suggestion, it would be to feature new bloggers who don’t have a readership to give them “a entry into xanga. ” Something like a submit this post for consideration of being featured for the first couple months.
From a marketing standpoint- having category featured posts may make sense. I am not sure what value it is to the community to have well established blogs on the featured page when they have friend lists and subscription lists that they can’t possibily keep up with anyway
meh being featured doesn’t mean anything to me. I’ve never been. I never will be (my blog’s kinda private anyway).
But featured posts are just interesting things to read when I’m bored.
there’s one thing though, that annoys me. do all featured posts have to have this “THOUGHT-PROVOKING” discussion question at the end? I mean, we’re not in middle school LA class. we can comment without this silly question aid…
It is interesting to see the numbers. I’ve been around since 2003 and in the past year I have been featured 8-9 times. I don’t mind the featured content and I try to help out smaller bloggers by getting an audience. I actually got my boyfriend featured for a photo essay he compiled from the protest at the RNC in St Paul. Sometimes if you find really awesome stuff all you have to do is message Dan with a link to share the wealth.
I’ve been featured four or five times since 2006 and have been on Top Blogs multiple times, but I do agree I think EVERYONE should be able to get on there… or it should be randomized- however you’d like to put it.
When I first started blogging on Xanga, the “Featured Weblogs” were those that received the most comments in the shortest amount of time. That meant that almost all of blogs featured were those written by intermediate school kids who weren’t necessarily writing about anything interesting–they just had a lot of friends who liked to post comments.
That old system was extremely frustrating because I assumed that the purpose of putting a blog under a spotlight was to recognize someone who had written something thought-provoking or original. Instead, however, we were shown blogs written by those who cared little about content and more about the popularity contest.
This new system appears to be based more on content–although, I may sound bias because it was only under this format that I was able to be featured. However, I’ve noticed that the blogs that are picked are about topics that range from the controversial to the everyday slice-of-life. It’s not fair to say that only the “popular kids” because, as you said, it is through the Featured Weblogs section that you were introduced to new writers.
Well said!
I think you have a great point. Somewhat dulled though by the realities of society.
Life is not fair. We will not always receive the attention we would like.
It would be far more productive and fulfilling to seek the audience of the One who sees all and rewards each one for every hidden thought and action.
i a bit agree. guess who? i have told all my friend to open this site to open my blog, but some people says, (in my country languanges), “oh my, how difficult”, or just “it make me feels dizzy”. Yeah, i think so, this site is hard to opened, but i reply a word to them, “please feel free to join and you will find a lot of fun!!!”
all of you think it so, right? this site for explain our habit, our life, and our problem too. i was so happy can join you all !!!