Could Xanga have Retained its Popularity?

I read this fascinating Washington Post article as to how social networking web-sites rise and fall over time. Included was some information about Xanga. The typical Xanga user used to spend 100 minutes a month on the site in 2002, a number that has since fallen to about 1/10th of that. The article made me think; since so many sites rise and fall, was there anything Xanga could have done to remain popular? The article suggests that new and innovative features encourage people to join new sites. What else could Xanga have done a few years ago? Here are some ideas. By the way, I want to make it clear that I think the site idea was visionary, and that John and the team deserve a lot of credit. I'm posting this because I really like the site, not because I want to snipe at Xanga leadership or something.

1. Xanga failed to market the popular bloggers it was creating and celebrities that were using the site. When I first got on Xanga, I started checking out the Featured page. There were some very talented grown-ups on there; TheBigShowatUD, a talented and witty man in law school; Model4Christ, which was the very honest blog for Shannon Stewart, runner-up on America's Next Top Model; Emprise34, who is singer David Crowder; and YellowSparkler13, who played for Michael W. Smith and wrote an excellent blog for women. But I don't think many people on Xanga ever knew about them, and that's a shame. Compare this to Myspace, which created dubious celebrities like Tila and Dane (I don't even want to type their last names, heh). I don't think that Xanga should favor certain people all the time, but I do think that Xanga staff should work hard to find such talented people and make sure they are featured at least once. Why not update featured once every 8 hours or 4 hours, instead of what seems to be the current once-a-day schedule?

2. Xanga couldn't make up its mind if it was a social networking site or a blogging site. Xanga is the best site out there to combine blogging and social networking, ok? But the problem is, it's not seen as a great blog site; in fact, some of my blogging friends elsewhere refuse to consider Xanga as a real blog site. Tumblr, Blogger, and Wordpress are the blog sites that people know...and yet I use Blogger and vastly prefer Xanga. On the other hand, it can be hard to find similarly-minded people on Xanga, because (1) no Metro Search (perhaps it could be set up for over 18, if we don't want to make teens searchable?) and (2) people don't use blog-rings as much. I've seen way too many decent Xanga blogs die because the poor folk never realized how to get other people to read them (comment on other people's sites, of course). Anyway, I wish Xanga had gone in one direction or the other; social networking or blogging. Which brings me to

3. Xanga had  no easily definable mission. Myspace is a place for friends, and Facebook is where you meet your classmates or workmates...but what is Xanga's mission? Could you describe what the site does in a sentence, or in a motto? I like the undefinability of Xanga, but I think it scares some people off, because they don't know what they are doing.

4. Xanga stayed with propreitary content too long. Xanga began by making money off their membership, which had users pay for the rights to use photos and videos. However, when the marketing model switched and Xanga could make money from google text ads, it seemed to take Xanga a little too long to open up the photo/video floodgates. But when they did, Xanga had some of the easiest to use photo/video storage options on the 'Net. I still think people under-rate this feature on Xanga--very few sites make it so easy to have photo, video, pulse, and blog on the same site. But also, I've usually had problems adding photo and video from other sites into my Xanga--why isn't it easier to embed Youtube videos or other content? Tumblr has made that possible, and they are reaping the benefits. Couldn't Xanga make it easier too? Also, I'm upset at how difficult it is to search through my archive, link to my Xanga content, and otherwise make my content portable. This still is a problem to this day.

5. Xanga couldn't make up its mind if it were high-end or low-end. On the one hand, Xanga is filled with smart people who blog well and have smart things to say. So it seems like it should promote itself as a high-end site with standards, and feature those talented people (see 1). But on the other hand, from about 2004 to 2006, the Xanga featured blog sometimes was very low-end. There were several times when porn (yes, porn) was available directly from the Xanga home page of xanga.com via someone's featured post in the sidebar. You know how disturbing that is when one is at work? Also, there were a lot of role-playing and ana sites featured. I'm not arguing censorship; people have a right to post what they want. My argument is about promotion--by having those sites featured so prominently, Xanga made itself look sleazy, when it wasn't. This scared off some parents--I had to argue with one of the deacons of my church that I wasn't a sinner for having a Xanga and Myspace. And it was a long argument as well! Now, Xanga has done a good job cleaning up the site. Mature content is mostly hidden, although occasionally something minor will slip through here or there. But I definitely think this hurt Xanga back in the day.

6. Xanga had no central gathering places for users to meet. If you were a new user on Xanga, where would you go? There was no newbie forum board or obvious directions as to what a new Xangan should do. Now we have featured questions and a lot more guidance, but that wasn't the case a few years ago. So when your friends got bored of the site, you were left with no one.

7. Xanga failed to market its exceptionally high proportion of female users and well-educated users. Here on Xanga, I would estimate that 80% of my readers and commenters are female. That's a great ratio, especially considering I did not meet many of them before I got on this site. Can't Xanga find a way to use this for marketing? Maybe they can have more female-oriented features, or more female writers. But on the other hand, when I look at featured, too often I see male Xangans. Perhaps the ladies aren't as good at relentless self-promotion (cough, cough) as their male counterparts, but I'd like to see more of them featured.

8. Xanga never hired any of its own bloggers to write content to bring people in. I don't know how much cash Xanga still has on hand. But why not hire some college kids, pay the a stipend of $5,000 for the school year, and have them write "Xanga Sports" or "Xanga Fashion" entries 5 days a week? It's not hard, and it would create a natural gathering place for Xanga readers. AOL Teens did something similar to that, but their sites were poorly designed to allow for communication; but that's not a problem for Xanga! Similarly, blogs could be started for Xanga Fashion, Xanga Tech, etc. This could help bump up web traffic and give people something to talk about. Gawker.com is one example of a network of blogs that has done this. Or maybe Xanga can make some people partners the way Youtube has--give them a share of ad money coming from their page.

9. Xanga failed to make a push for the 20- and 30-something crowd. The post-college presence was never that strong around here--and I subscribed to several of those groups, so I should know. I keep thinking that if only Xanga could have hooked that audience, they could have weathered the departure of some of their younger members. Xanga was a good fit for that crowd--the subscription service is natural, it's easy to get started writing if you've been on the Web before, and you can protect some posts while making others public. Also, those people have money, so they would have paid for more Lifetime memberships.

10. I'm out of good reasons. Why don't you tell me the 10th reason? I think a major factor in Xanga's future is, can they come up with something completely new? Xanga's new features lately have been better than most competitors, but not truly original. If Xanga can come up with something original, or rebrand itself, I think it can still get some traffic back.

For the record, here are two ways in which Xanga did not fail in my opinion

1. Xanga did not get dominated by the Asian or teenager demographic. Some people will try to tell you that the Xanga name was too foreign-sounding, or that Xanga had too many Asians and/or teenagers. That's ridiculous, because unlike Myspace, you aren't bombarded with comments and friend requests from strangers. And this was never a problem when the site was more popular and plenty of other races/ages were using it. Sorry, that's no excuse, and some who use it teeter on the edge of bigotry in doing so.

2. Xanga did not fail by restricting content and placing some parental controls on material. I know that some of the R-rated bloggers want to go back to the old days, where their racy content could be featured. But trust me, the site didn't lose so much traffic just because your f-bombs or homemade smut are not on featured anymore. It's not as if Myspace or Facebook allows much of that content, either, so your reasoning is not logical. Start your own web-site already, if you feel that passionate about your freedom of expression, and maybe charge readers or make money off ads. And send me 50% of the proceeds already for giving you the idea, ha.