Ill-fated weblog network Blognation appears to have taken one step closer to retirement or hiatus. The site’s designer-developers Howard/Baines have scrapped the front page in favour of this succinct message…
After stepping aside last week, Slough-based founder Sam Sethi told us several buyers were interested in the detritus of the 13-blog site, which covers the web startup scene. He had earlier written he would auction the site. Blognation collapsed with what Sethi said were debts of £30,000 after planned venture funding failed to materialise, leaving writers unpaid and a trail of public fall-out across the web.
For one VC’s view of Blognation – see today’s lesson from Atlas Ventures’ Fred Destin, who funded Dailymotion and reckons the volume with which Blognation has come off the road “is in inverse proportion to its importance as a medium”. With much more sobriety, Destin lumps the episode in with a profanity-ridden blog spat between Seesmic founder Loic Lemeur and a reviewer.
Destin says such fights are entertaining but: “Time for the blogosphere to grow up. Trust, transparency and ethics are not concepts you have the right to use because you publish under a Creative Commons license. It is something you demonstrate, not something you talk about.” And these are the guys such startups should be falling over themselves to impress.
– Updated: Blognation’s Belgian writer Rob Waulters Robin Wauters has upped sticks back to his old personal blog, taking his Blognation archive with him.