I'm really starting to hate Xanga. 

I'm so sick of their stupid affiliate (read: spam) sites subbing to me and trying to friend me. 

Hardly anyone I know blogs anymore. 

I hardly blog anymore.

Footprints Lock is the absolute worst thing ever to happen to social networking.

Anytime one of the Xanga staff posts about an official direction/idea/feature/change they are considering, it just pisses me off.

I have no idea why I'm still here.  At this point, I'm just paying them $25 a year for image hosting.

I am so sick of Xanga.  I read the blogs of the Xanga staff in an attempt to keep up with what's changing on the site, what improvements they are making, and more and more I just end up getting pissed off for it.

The latest is an idea -- being pushed by Xanga Dan with a pulse imploring people to "VOTE!" even though the vote page does not include an option to VOTE NO -- to make it so that if you update your time stamp on your posts more than once, it will cost you credits.

Credits.  Those things probably piss me off more than anything else Xanga has done to ruin what used to be a great blog site.  Everything is about the credits.  This used to be a place just to blog, to meet cool people, to build some online friendships.  Now it's all about the credits, earning credits, using credits, charging credits.

Is updating a time stamp really such an annoyance that you have to charge people to do it?  I can go over to Blogger or any number of other blog sites and update my time stamp any damn number of times I want.  I don't -- but I can.  I assume that if people get sick of their subs changing their time stamps, they know enough to unsub.

Instead of creating additional options for Xanga users with competent coding and technology -- options like allowing someone to ignore updates on a post, or remove it from the SIR page -- they want to restrict how someone uses their own blog by charging them credits for the options that should be available to them by all rights because it's their own freaking blog.

Dan pushed this idea before, but now it's just so blatantly loading their brand spankin' new "voting" system with yes votes.... because they don't give the option of no votes.  Nice system.  Maybe no votes will cost credits in the next update.

This place is changing too much.  They are proffering ideas that will just continue to push traffic away from Xanga.  One of Dan's last ideas was to get rid of pulsing and integrate it with Twitter instead.  I don't use Twitter -- I use pulse.  It's one of the last things I do use here, after more than 6 years of loyal Xangaship.  With the mass exodus of most of the people I've considered friends on this site, who are moving to more functional and useful applications like Blogger, Facebook, and yes even Twitter, if they got rid of pulsing it would probably be the end of this place for me.

As it is now, about half the sites I read I cannot comment on.  People keep footprints lock on, and I keep footprints off, because I value privacy in my web browsing experience.  So I can read blogs on my SIR page, but can't comment on them.  So much for interaction.

Lots of other people have left Xanga for other sites.  Others have just.... left.  They just don't blog anymore, dropped off the face of the internet.

Why don't I go find new people to read?  I think I'm just tired of this place.  The focus is on featuring posts -- how many times has the Featured process changed in the past 6 years??  The super-bloggers have all the decision making power.  This latest dumb idea came from the King of Dumb, and Xanga staff jumped right on it.  They know who butters their bread.

I don't know if Xanga even has a direction to point to anymore, a focus, a long-term plan, beyond "make money, generate ad revenue."  They seem to be completely winging it, using the loudest voices (i.e., the most popular bloggers) to direct the vision of the site.  If they keep this up, they'll end up with a handful of superblogs and a buttload of users who haven't updated their sites since 2005.

I really think I'm one stupid idea away from being completely done with this place.  My only issue now is finding the time to offload all the pictures I have stored here onto my computer, so when I let my premium lapse I don't lose them.

I've not had a whole lot to say on Xanga lately.  I've pulsed probably twice as much as I've blogged.

While I'm thinking about it, if you are a pulser, check out this pulse from Dan and weigh in with your opinion on his idea about replacing pulse with Twitter.  Personally, I wouldn't have a whole lot of use for Xanga anymore if they did that.

Anyway, I've been on Facebook more than Xanga, and not even there a whole lot.  I feel like I have a lot to say but I don't want to say any of it.  There's no point to it.  So, it's been maybe one post a month, and that mostly fluff.  I just don't have the energy to put myself out there for all the world to see anymore.

I hope everyone who happens by this post has a great Christmas.