NONContent

Awaiting me in my inbox this morning was a mail informing me of the closure of a superb site that not a lot of people bothered to take advantage of:

Dear Guy Carberry,

(This message went out moments ago with an apparent problem in the mail merge, in that you all received the notice with my own information in it. I sincerely apologize for the error.)

This is a quick note to inform you that ONContent (http://www.oncontent.com) is closing down due to low/no activity, and an even lower amount of time for me to support it.

When I started ONContent, I envisioned it as a place where people could list their blogs and syndicated content, and thought that while web interest might not be as high for independent content developers as it is for, say, network news feeds, I felt that there would be more interest than has been displayed.

This is not to indicate a failing on your part — far from it. I appreciate your willingness to provide your syndicated content. I should have done my homework a little better.

In the last three days, the site has gotten 53 hits; MERGE, the ONContent news page, a whopping 3 – that’s THREE – hits. I can’t justify this to the accountant (read: my wife) any more, and so I’m going to remove ONContent and use the space for one of my other sites that gets a little more traffic.

ONContent will cease operations on or before Friday, March 7, 2003.

There’s nothing you need to do, unless you’ve provided a link on your site to ONContent, in which case I’d ask that you take it down at your convenience.

ONContent and MERGE were (and until tomorrow, ARE) fantastic sites that enable independent content producers (bloggers) to syndicate their news with others. The service was completely free and the idea was that there would be loads of news feeds coming in to a central place where users could drop in, browse by categoryand find out what other bloggers had to say for themselves.

Through these site i found LittleYellowDifferent – a site that splits my sides on a regular basis. GuyWeb and Shay speaks both provide feeds to MERGE and no doubt a few people have found our sites through the service. All I can say is that it’s a real shame that the idea never took off. Maybe it was a little before its time?

Tags: Web