This morning I received notification that BlogRush is no more. R.I.P. Funny, I just signed up and thought it a good idea, but apparently, they've pulled the plug. You'll want to remove the code as who knows what will populate your site if the site is sold. Here's the email as it came from BlogRush this morning:
After careful consideration, we have decided to shutdown the BlogRush service. If you have the widget code on your blog you will need to remove it.
When BlogRush launched in late-2007 it spread like wildfire all over the Web. Thousands of bloggers were talking about it and the service exploded to become one of the fastest growing free services in the history of the Web. During the first year of the service it successfully served 3.4 Billion blog post headlines and the BlogRush widget could be found on blogs all over the world; even up until the moment we closed down the service.
BlogRush didn’t grow without its fair share of problems — from security issues to abusive users trying to ‘game’ the system to much lower click-rates than expected. We also had some problems with trying to fairly control the quality of the network, and in the process made many mistakes in deciding what blogs should stay or go. All of these issues, ultimately, limited the service’s full potential.
Our team worked very hard to try and build a service that would truly help bloggers of all sizes get free traffic to their blogs. This was our primary focus. Not once did we ever try to monetize the service with ads or anything else. BlogRush never made a single penny in revenue. We wanted to be able to help our users FIRST and then worry about monetizing the service later. Unfortunately, the service didn’t work out like we had hoped. (It happens.)
I want to say “Thank You” to all of the great bloggers that at least gave BlogRush a test to see if it would work for them. We sincerely appreciate you giving the service a try.
We have received several offers & inquiries about acquiring BlogRush, but we are choosing not to go that route. While many might think this is crazy, we truly feel it’s the ‘right’ thing to do for our users. Believe it or not, it’s not always about the money. In fact, BlogRush will have lost a small fortune when it’s all said and done, and it was by choice. There were many things we could have done to monetize the service but we wanted to make sure it was going to benefit our users first.
Last but not least I want to say that I hope the failure of this service doesn’t in any way discourage other entrepreneurs from coming up with crazy ideas at 4AM (like I did with this one) and from “going for it” to just try and see if something will work. Without trying there can be no success. And as we all know, ideas are worthless without action. The Web wouldn’t be what it is today without entrepreneurs trying all sorts of crazy ideas.
On behalf of the entire BlogRush team, we wish the best of luck to everyone with their own blogs, ideas, and crazy ventures.
Sincerely,
John Reese
I'm Cassie and I work for The Lane Real Estate Team (my Mom and Dad) as their virtual assistant. A rather nice arrangement, I might add. I work for them, and they pay my college tuition! Not bad! If you need a great real estate team, or property manager, consider Team Lane for all Southeast Washington real estate needs. :)
I admit, I must have been the ONLY person that did not use Blogrush. Yikes. I have to tell you though, your photo above, I have that hanging in my office and it says Fraun Power, from Germany. You go.
Thanks for stopping by Audrey. My avatar is Rosie The Riveter! ;)
John Reese sounds like one of those guys that buys a Professional Sports team then gets tired of losing money after having incompetent management. Then decides to pull the plug (move the team these days)
Its not always about the money but if he had put some pay per click ads on it it might still exist but far be it for me to decide whats in the best interests of his users but I ask this question, "Are they better off with nohting at all?"
There is nothing wrong with making money for providing a valuable service, thats why Realtors get paid.
We never used this service as we heard through the grapevine that there was trouble up ahead. Hope things work out for them positively.
I'm sorry I missed out on blogrush. I am also creating a web based application. After reading the letter from John Reece I fel like a money grubbing heathen. Building a profitable business model has been our priority. It is great to see there are still people out there who have the true heart of great inventors and explorers of our past.
I am using so many different services that I actually have to go to my home page and check and see is this is a service I am using.......
I used Blogrush for a short time. Terribly disappointing. And then they KICKED one of my blogs out? Or was it all of my blogs out?
I never thought BlogRus worked for real estate blogs, but the idea of a widget to display content on other blogs made sense, just not other real estate blogs. Real estate is local.
I just was looking for posts to see when BlogRush was introduced... and wjem he closed it