October 6, 2011
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Xanga State of the Union
It's been a while since we gave an update on what we're up to here at Xanga HQ.
We've been hard at work lately, to better support our amazing community. Here are some of the highlights:
- FOCUS ON BLOGGING: We're working to simplify and streamline Xanga: both to clean up the interface, and also to focus the Xanga experience on its strength: blogging
- INTEGRATION: There are a lot of great features on Xanga that don't get used very much. For example, if you post a photo... it doesn't appear on your Xanga Site unless you post it in a weblog, or a reader happens to click on the photo tab. We're working to change that
- STRONGER MOBILE SUPPORT: This work will also enable us to add stronger mobile support. We've made a lot of progress with our mobile beta, and are excited to cross the finish line with mobile apps.
As we get the basics in play, we are looking to get your feedback on what you'd like to see. Along those lines, for the rest of this month we'll be hosting a conversation on TheXangaTeam blog about different aspects of Xanga. We'll be posting on different topics, both sharing our thoughts and collecting your feedback.
On a personal note, I will always be grateful to Xanga. I met my wife on the site, and we've had two kids together (neither named Xanga, alas). Oh yah, I forgot to mention... last night, Mrs. Xanga gave birth to our second kid: a baby girl.
Xanga has been a wonderful force for good in the lives of many of us at Xanga HQ. We'd like to return the favor by making the site better than ever. The Xanga team has been putting our heads together, and we're getting increasingly excited about the future. We're looking forward to talking to many of you over the next month, and working together to make this community great!
Comments (118)
Whatever you do,PLEASE do NOT make it another freaking FACEBOOK or TWITTER!
Congrats, Bee! (and John)!
Congrats to you and your wife on your new baby girl!! How exciting!!
And thank you for all the good work you do on Xanga!
HUGS!
Congrats to you and your wife!
I'm pretty content with what TheXangaTeam has done and provided us with, but here are things that would be awesome to have:
1) Mobile App [which you guys are already working on]
2) Multiple protected lists [or a way to choose who we'd want seeing specific posts]
That's all that comes to mind for now. =P
@arenadi - Ditto.
i cannot wait for an iphone app for xanga
I really hope xanga can become another facebook or twitter.
First off... CONGRATS JOHN!!
Second, I'm very happy TheXangaTeam is doing this forum deal as I'm sure there's no shortage of opinions.
I definitely want to hear the status of the iPhone Xanga app. How close is that to being finished?
As always, let me know if you ever need assistance with anything.
congratulations!!
i feel like there should be some facebook type features on here. facebook does have a few good ideas and there is nothing wrong with incorporating those ideas into xanga. people just get bent out of shape when that happens because then xanga is "mainstream" or some crap lol. *rolls eyes*
best of luck to you with baby and xanga!
well i'm def waiting for a droid app
At the top of my list would be making it easier to read protected posts. To know when I'm on one, for people to read mine... I like getting rid of features no one uses or making them more available. Integrating photos in a better way could be useful.
Congratulations on your new addition. =)
Looking forward to the progression.
awww, congrats!!! Beautiful baby...
And can't wait for new updates.
Congratulations to John and Bee on the birth of their second child.
Congratulations on your beautiful new daughter!
I'm looking forward to seeing the improved mobile app. I'd love to have the ability to post photos, Pulse and timestamp via my smart phone, flag spam comments with one click (although I suspect that feature would probably be horribly abused), and have my inbox automatically update without having to refresh it. There are other things I'd like to see as well, but I'll wait and see what comes up in the discussions this month. I love that you guys ask our opinions and listen to our input.
Many thanks for the nice update.
I second the comment to keep xanga as uniquely set apart as it has been.
Congratulations to you both on another bundle of joy.
Been pleased so far with xanga. The mobile app sounds promising too.
Take care,
Cheers
congratulations to Bee and you. you guys have been busy
CONGRATS on the new little one!!! Joy, happiness and health to your family!
I want to say how much Xanga has brought to my life by making it possible to meet such wonderful people!!!
Droid app - please!
My heartfelt congratulations on the birth of your daughter.
congrats John to you and your wife. Xanga has been a big part of my life as well and definitely helped form many friendships both online and off.
Here's some thoughts for you off the top of my head: - I definitely agree with cleaning up the interfaces and focusing on simplifying everything... for example, do you know how hard it is to view protected posts? Takes a lot more clicks and navigating than necessary.
- Focus on ajax and dynamic loading, right now everything on the interface side causes a page refresh, with web 2.0, this is really no longer necessary.
- I really like how tumblr monetizes from their theme marketplace, I think xanga should explore other monetization strategies besides ads and premium.
- There's a lot of legacy stuff on xanga that became half baked over time. Things like your profile, the images / videos, all the modules on your site, etc... focus back on the core of the site, and make that the best possible experience, everything else just adds clutter and distraction.
- Subscriptions and friending/following... pick one and stick with it, and get rid of the subscriptions feed, having both just doesn't make sense.
- Figure out where your strengths are... to me, it's always been about the people and community. I'm not sure how that translates into product, but it's something to think about.
- Hire an amazing UI/UX designer
Anyway I still really love xanga, so hope I'm not coming off as harsh. I just want it to have a comeback because I still, for some reason, think it's an awesome place.
Congratulations to the proud parents, John and Bee.
congratulations on the new baby!!! we love xanga, please don't change it much...It's the BEST!!!
Congratulations to John, Bee and Xanga on the new addition to the Xanga Family.
congratulations on your new little one! that is wonderful news. she's probably already got ideas on how to improve Xanga! hah! that's really wonderful. thanks for sharing the news.
Congratulations on your beautiful baby girl! Thanks for the update and all the hard work of the Xanga team. Looking forward to future exciting changes!
Need to make an app ASAP.
Dear John,
First of all, congratulations. (Where's my cigar?)
You'll have to pry the keyboard out of my cold dead hands before I give up on Xanga. However, I tend to spend more and more time away from blogging as I age. (I'm 58 now, and have been blogging here since 2004.)
The two things I'd STILL like to see.
1. Some kind of comment search function. I'd love to be able in some way to find a list of the comments I've left on any site, and also be able to find all the comments a particular Xangan has left me.
2. Video support. I'm hating YouTube these days. Esp. since they cite "copyright infringement" even when I always acknowledge the copyright holder of any music I include in a mashup. Xanga started out on the right foot with video, but backstepped a little. I'd love to be able to post my increasingly large video library right here, with full HD support.
Keep up the good work.
Michael F. Nyiri poet, philosopher, fool
What a BEAUTIFUL baby girl!!! Congratulations!!
)
Congratulations! Please let Roadlesstaken know if you need anything.
You should also concentrate on blocking certain trolls, like the "malaysians" and Curtis.
@InternetDominator - At least they got rid of axis_of_doom and harryp0thed! They were so much worse than the still living ElizabethTravis.
4lbs? Thats a wittle baby. Congrats =]
@ItIsAllGravy - Her blog is STILL out there?! LOL... I wonder what the fuck the Xanga Team is thinking.
Congratulations!
@ItIsAllGravy - Of course, I could see why they got rid of me, but they should've got rid of Curtis a LONG time ago.
I was the first to comment when your wife went into labor like minutes after she posted, I don't know why but that REALLY excited me!!! haha congratulations!!!!!
also, that's really cool about the integration
the mobile thing is cool but I'm bitter because I don't have smartphone hahaha
and I like the idea of cleaning up the interface - for example, some of the layouts on wordpress just look so... nice. do they have the way you click to leave comments copyrighted? I really like their layouts, like this one for example: http://nicoleintherealworld.wordpress.com/
I love wordpress layouts but I'm too attached to xanga - it would be awesome if the layouts could come here
@InternetDominator - Harryp0thed got shut down for making fun of paul_partisan's terrible poetry. Loborn has posted my photo and ripped on me several times. I don't really care that he posted my picture and said what he said, but it's a clear double standard.
Congratulations John and Bee.
Xanga is still fantastic website I have been here on the site 2005. and had a few fresh restarts with my current account.
Whatever you do the site I be always using it
I have tried the rest of the sites from Facebook, Myspace, Livejournal, Vox etc. Xanga is more fun
Congratulations.
Awwww so cute! I remember your first one being born...
Congratulations to John and Bee on the birth your daughter. May she be as innovative and creative as Steve Jobs. :)
@ItIsAllGravy - That's ALL you did?! I could name about a thousand things Loborn has done!
Wtf are you doing, XANGA TEAM?!
So does this mean that we won't be able to add photos to our photo section w/o posting them?
I post primarily photo-posts -- please keep that as simple as possible. I use the add photos feature, then drop those photos into text as I write it -- that works easily and well. Thanks!
I'm probably being selfish when I said this, but I like that Xanga is not integrated with the other social networks. It can become overbearing and if I wanted to reference people to my Xanga, I would simply post a link. Also, my Xanga is extra personal and only for strangers and myself to read haha.
Wants:
Android app and one that is also tablet optimized!
Glad to hear you're cleaning up the interface, I trust you guys on that.
And last, but not least: Congratulations on the baby!
Congratulations on your newest addition, John!
Looking forward to the new things you'll do with my favorite place on the web! 
First major congratulations on your baby girl!!!!!!!
I love this FOCUS ON BLOGGING: We're working to simplify and streamline Xanga: both to clean up the interface, and also to focus the Xanga experience on its strength: blogging
Congrats on the baby girl! May the improvements be better and improve xanga for years to come.
OMEDETOU!! Congratulations!!!
Congrats to you and Bee! You make some beautiful babies.
Glad to see some future Xangans being born.
I do like being able to upload an image and keep it hidden until I'm ready to post it in a blog.
Congratulations on the new baby! I love Xanga.
Congrats, John on your new born baby girl!
I would like if xanga would create clip art that we could either buy or place on our sites. Most websites have locked their photos, so it would be nice if there was a database to pull from for our weblogs. We could pay for them with minis or something or pay for the feature.
I always thought xanga could come up with a book of best blogs and comments too.
I would like to thank Xanga Team for responding to my reports on trolling activities. Thank you for shutting troll sites GoldColoredSilk which was created by ItIsAllGravy and Generic_Malaysian which was created by Axis_Of_Doom aka InternetDorminator.
My friends and I will continue to support Xanga Team and help them to elimate troll sites by reporting all kinds of harassments and cyberbullying around Xanga.
Congratulations to John and Bee on the birth of their daughter. Charlie now has a wonderful little sister.
she's BEAUTIFUL!!! congratulation john and family. xanga IS home to many good people.
@InternetDominator - You mean Malaysians like me? You created dozens of trolls sites and you created the troll site Generic_Malaysian. YOU MADE CONFESSIONS OF YOUR TROLLING ACTIVITIES.
You have offended a lot of Malaysians on Xanga and they made complains about it. Xanga Team punished you, not the Malaysians. YOU TROLL, YOU PAY.
Trolling and troll sites are banned on Xanga. Haven't you read the Xanga Terms Of Use? We did.
@GoldenSilk - Again, that's NOT something I would get caught dead doing again, and you run around trying to moderate the place and call people trolls when they don't deserve it. And you pretend to be different people when in reality you are most likely the same person because of the way you comment.
Sounds like trolling to me.
Now fuck off.
@GoldenSilk - Oh, and if you think I was behind that "generic Malaysian" site, you'd be wrong. I dare you to find proof of that.
Oh wait, you can't because I didn't do it.
congrats, John, to you and you wife on the precious brand-new baby girl! what a sweetheart! ~ lea
@InternetDominator - ONCE A TROLL, ALWAYS A TROLL. You are the best troll around here. Haven't you read what you wrote yourself? You insulted my friends, my country and our flag. You tried to incite hatred between Americans and Malaysians. You attached a photo of people burning flags. You tried to confused the Americans into hating Malaysians.
We've done nothing to you but you attacked our nationalities and our country and abuse our flag. You are an online terrorist who declared war on my country.
You are on our troll watch list.
@InternetDominator - You can thank your troll buddy ItIsAllGravy for the shutting down of your site. He inspired you to troll on Malaysians.
Wheee.. congratulation! (: (:
@GoldenSilk - Lol, now you're just being a lying motherfucker. Provide me proof that I did ANY of those things, and I'll bother to apologize to you. Until then, you're a liar and you're a hypocrite, whoever you are behind all those troll sites you call "Malaysian" sites.
I don't have any bigotry toward Malaysians at all, yet I have a fairly strong dislike for people who want to say that me and gravy are trolls (I used to be one) and yet you never bat an eyelash toward what Loborn did. As a matter of fact, if you think you are the moderators around here, you would be wrong, because your little friend Curtis just went the way of the dinosaurs on this site, LOL!
And calling people "terrorists" when you don't have ANY proof of me doing that would certainly count as trolling, my little troll friend. If you think *I'm* a troll, first of all you should really provide some proof that I did any trolling after I did that shit to Loborn, and second of all, you should really watch your own behavior. I'm not the type of person that would start a war between two countries; you are a liar and a motherfucking instigator.
And I may be on your watch list, but if I come across any of your little clones, you'll be blocked, end of story.
Once a troll always a troll? Prove it. I haven't done anything to troll anybody since Loborn.
Congrats to both of you on the birth of your daughter!
I'm looking forward to these sessions. A lot of us have strong emotional ties to Xanga and we all want it to succeed and be more resilient.
Congrats to you both or should we say you three! Good luck with everything, seems you've been here before so at least you know what to look forward to. Again, blessings to all... peace
Congratulations!!
Congrats!
now think about this...If xanga becomes another facebook, I am gone and I imagine a lot of ppl will be.We come here because it's NOT facebook! I don't think you should mess with the pics. Some of us WANT to keep some things private. I want to share photos with my friends here, but I am here to blog, not to become a top xanga writer and I don't want any old person who happens on my site seeing my pics unless I decide to make them public. I come here to escape facebook and all the dang relatives there. Please think about how for some of us here, we'd llike to keep our private little world private.
Very cute babies and love story.
I appreciate the technical help that I have been given. I am an old guy and not to sharp technically with computers.
I wish there was a feature that let us block people from appearing in our UI. There are a few people I don't want to show up in my UI at all yet I keep seeing their stuff Rec'd to me all the time.
Other than that, Xanga is awesome
And congratulations on your baby girl!
Congrats! Your child is so precious.
I would love it if there is a place where we can batch edit posts and moderate comments. I received an awful lot of spam comments, so I had to turn off annoymous log-in, which I hated doing because I don't want to limit the readers/commenters (no matter how little there are
). So a better spam-blocking system will be muchly appreciated.
Congratulations to you and Mrs. Xanga. I'm sure this will be another comment in the flurry of comments, but I'd like to say, I'm very happy with Xanga. I've been loyal xangan since 2002, never planning on leaving. I love the ability to look back and see what happened, how I was, things I did years ago. I gotta say I am REALLY looking forward to a mobile version for Android (I own 2 android phones). Also, one service I would definitely pay for is the ability to either order or download a file/disk/print of all entries to date. I've always wanted to print out my entries and place them in an actual binder, just never had the time.
Congrats on the cutie!
And now for the feedback: I really like xanga and have been using it for years. The new chat feature is an interesting one and also like being able to easily see new comments on my posts. Those were good improvements. However, I get the feeling like xanga is becoming too much like facebook with the tagging, friending, and newsfeeds. Xanga has a different appeal from fb and should focus on that as a strength. And I agree with yosho that it takes way too many clicks to see a protected post, in fact sometimes protected posts are up forever and aren't seen by people on the protected list. I typically see bloggers pulsing "protected post" in order to announce to the world that they have one up. Also I've always liked the audio sharing option that's very unique to xanga, but it takes so many steps to upload then copy/paste share an audio clip that I don't bother with it. Thanks for asking for our opinion.
Congrats on the new baby
Sounds great, I appreciate all that you guys do!
Congratulations on your little one -she is adorable!
Congratulations!!!
@arenadi - Congratulations to mum and dad (Mr and Mrs Xanga) on the birth of your beautiful baby girl.
Congratulations @john !
Looking forward to what y'all have in store.
Congrats!
And thank you for making this awesome site!
One very minor update that would be nice, is that when i get update e-mails about new comments, sometimes if the comment has a line high space in it then all the text below the space isn't put in the update e-mail :S bit of an odd glitch but can be slighty annoying.
Other than that I love this site and am excited to see any future updates, esspecially more mobile features.
Congratulations on your new addition!
how adorable!
I look most forward to the mobile apps! So far, I can only pulse on my phone... hopefully I can blog on there too!
First off, congratulations! Fantastic news that you have an addition to your family.
With regards to Xanga, it would be nice to have a simpler way to combine video, photos, blog entries, and pulses into one place. I've never understood why they are so segregated.
Streamlining the friends/subscriptions functions would be nice. While I don't want Xanga to become "facebook-ized", having friends and subscriptions be two different things doesn't make much sense to me.
Finally, I would like to see a function that suggests other Xangans to me. For example, if I'm reading one of my subscriptions, I would love to receive a notice saying "Hey, XYZ and 3 other Xangans you subscribe to are also subscibed to ZYX. Perhaps you would like to read them?" That way I can find people with common interests.
Keep up the good work!
Good to hear. If you want a community then you must be part of that community. Looking forward to the discussions.
oh yeah, while I'm here...
There's a technical problem on xanga to where if someone has too many comments, it like automatically puts them in the top blogs. EC made fun of me. I talk to like 3 people at once and this happened. My site has never been rated, but it's not for minors. I don't want to get into trouble. I have schizophrenia, so I often blog about mental health problems, or I have extreme opinions on things. I'm not lewd, but I don't think parents would appreciate their kids coming home with glorious tales of psych wards or my opinion. If you weren't my xanga friend knowing me, it would come off as offensive.
Every once in awhile, I see myself up there. I've managed to cut down on the problem by turning footprints on (will this stop it completely). When I first came to xanga, there was a button that allowed us to turn this off so that none of our material ended up in the top blogs so that I don't have to worry about it ever. I can't find it now.
Now I don't mind the featured sites because it has a one post content so people have to chose to click on me. I have enough friends that I get enough attention.
Oh, and can you start a story site? Like Story-ish?
I would be immensely happy if Xanga was usable on my blackberry!
My man John, makin' those babies. Congrats dude!
Oh I am so waiting for that APP!
Congratulations! How does the big brother feel now that he is a big brother?
Congratulations John on the beautiful new addition to your family. How wonderful you have a boy and a girl now. Perfect Family!!
I will tell you what I would like to see John. After I comment on a post I have to click on the back arrow several times to get back to my own blog. I would love to see where I could go back to my blog by clicking on something that says," return to your post" . If there IS something like that already, then I am not aware of it. I see where I can return to the blog of the person I am commenting on, but not to my site. It will help me save a lot of time.
Also, we need some more minis John. Neat ones and funny ones and sarcastic ones. I know you have some there, but we need some fresh blood here.
Enjoy the baby.
congrats
Congratulations on your new baby girl!
Thank you for wanting to make Xanga more enjoyable for all of us.
I want to become a lifetime Prem member. $100 seems like a lot to give all at once. It'd be nice if we have the option of doing four payments of $25 instead. If I had the option of paying $25 for one year Prem membership, and then renewing my membership at the end of that year with it all going towards the $100 for lifetime Prem, I would def. do it. =)
congrats!
I think people shouldn't be allowed to rec comments on their blogs
Congrats on the new addition to your family.
Please don't do away with videos.
aww! congrats to you and your wife! and, of course, the new big sister!
I would like to add that one thing my friends and I really like about Xanga is the ability to make things protected and private. It frustrates us that there is such a huge push, elsewhere online, to share everything with everyone.
Please, please, please continue to let us determine with whom we share.
Thanks!
Oh wow so you are the mystery man I've always wondered about. LOL Congrats on your new baby girl. She is beautiful.
congrats of the birth of your daughter
I do not like the idea of making pics part of a facebook type news feed. do. not. want.
Easier access to protected posting would be WIN.
Also as some one else said, I've probably paid at least a hundred bucks in buying premium over the years. I think it would be good if every time we paid for it, it would accumulate until $100 is paid and at that point, we could get lifetime.
Are we allowed to advertise on here someone?
UI should be on the top of this list. Xanga's layout and settings is still hard to decipher after all these years.
Many congratulations and happy wishes for you and your family! What wonderful news!
congratulations on the beautiful baby girl!
awww...congrats on the beautiful baby!! (and thanks for the update too!)
Congrats on your beautiful baby!
Thank you John and Xanga team for keeping things going and for working on updating.
I agree, a mobile app (iphone) would be great. Also, a way to remove our own comments if we so choose - comments we make on others' sites. An easier way to upload and include videos in a post - it only works for me if I link to YouTube; never can get video to upload directly. Also, a way to keep trolls off our site (people who create a Xanga the same day just to get around Sign-In lock) without having to go on Friends Lock.
Thanks for all you do, and for listening to us!
Absolutely darling!! Congratulations to you and your family
So happy for you! Enjoy, enjoy each moment....
I have not been here in a while..now with new pc, I am having problems..does not show that I have comments when I have them, or messages when I have them. Can you direct me to the right person..thanks John and Best wishes, good health and much happiness to you all..Lee PS giving you a 'good morning' because each on is special with a baby to wake up to
I miss xanga TV. It was one of my favorite features of xanga.
congratulations, @John... on the Xanga question you posed, I want to see my Pulse's linked to my Twitter account so that whatever I Tweet it automatically posts as my Pulse and vice versa...
And yes, you have a point, The photo and video blog seems like a duplication of the blog per se... why not just integrate everything. Although the photos as albums would be nice if we can just keep it on a more private level... I meant the photo manager, they're ok...
Congrats!!
I would like to see back is the tabs for what movie, book etc that you are reading, watching etc at that moment in the weblog that xanga use to have please bring it back! Thanks!!
Keep up the great work!!
G rated version of a xanga homepage/front page.
The ablity to know and read someones comment after your comment.
I'd also like to see some of the old xanga blog rings cleaned up or deleted for lack of posting.
Oh my CONGRATULATIONS! Not sure if I came to say ..what a darling! Oh that is just so special...enjoy..take good care all....hugs...Lee
congrats!! What a cutie!!
My wishlist
1. iPad/iPhone apps that allow for posts (including private and protected), photo uploading, working comment box, etc.
2. play nicer with Safari and mobile web browsers in general (so I don't have to use the totally stripped down post editor)
3. multiple protected lists .... or perhaps "public" feed that's open to everyone + "friends lock" for a wider subscription community +"protected" posting for my close friends
4. I agree with the person before me who said simplify, streamline, and get everything working in the same format/style
5. Better under-the-hood HTML coding for import/export. For example, when Facebook automatically imports one of my Xanga posts as a Note, I get all kinds of messy HTML leftovers....
6. A way to organize the Photo Manager by year (taken or uploaded) or subject. I've got like 40 "pages" of photos of Xanga now and it's exhausting to skim through to find a photo from, say, 2007.
7. I use Xanga as a class website, so every year I'm teaching high school students to use the site. They find the "home" page cluttered and confusing. (I do too, which is why I still use the classic "home" page -- everything is neatly organized and the text links are easy to navigate, plus all my previous posts are right at hand.)
Things I love about Xanga that I don't want to change:--Protected posting -- it's why I'm still here--Photo Albums--Tags for posts and photos and albums--Search my entire Xanga site--Currently reading/listening/playing (I *really* like this. Please don't kill it off.)--Ability to upload full-res photos and store them here--Themes--Footprints--Recommend (posts and comments)
Congratulations!
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