Threadwatch, a web community dedicated to posting and discussing internet marketing news, will close on Friday, its proprietor said.
Aaron Wall explained that he did not have the time to take the site mainstream, counter competition from a growing number of blogs and keep contributors on the straight and narrow, thanks to new personal commitments.
Threadwatch was created by Nick Wilson in 2004 before he moved on a year later to found the Performancing blog metrics enterprise that was the subject of an aborted buy-out by PayPerPost earlier this year.
Wall acquired the site from Wilson on his departure. Taking a cue from early community news platforms like Kuro5hin and Slashdot, Threadwatch enjoyed a reputation as an irreverent source of industry news.
But Wall, a search engine optimisation consultant who also writes the SEO Book weblog, wrote the site could no longer continue.
“I thought I could make it more mainstream over time, but I just don’t have enough time tooand probably am not strong enough to move it that far from what it currently is,” Wall said.
“There are too many hidden agendas for it to be a smooth community
.
Many of the best members here started their own blogs, and contribute more on their own blogs and less here.“After I got a girlfriend I started appreciating the value of my time a lot more than when I was alone, and simply do not have enough time.”
Wall also said he felt embarrassed that Threadwatch contributors were submitting their own writing to Digg and complained that, as internet marketing commentary has increasingly moved from community sites to blogs, the signal-to-noise ratio at his site suffered.
Wall spoke of closing the site rather than selling it.