Last Friday we announced that due to financial trouble Metblogs would be going offline at the end of the month. During the course of the following days we recieved many many many emails from concerned readers and authors. It was an unbelievable outpouring of emotion and support that quite frankly took us by complete and utter surprise. We posted a page to take donations from people who wanted to help us out and oh boy, help out they did. At the time of this writing we have raised $3405 and donations are still coming in.

The generosity of our readers and authors has enabled us to pay off the most pressing of our bills and has given Metblogs a new lease on life. We had a close call and we’re not completely out of the woods yet so we’re leaving the donation page up for a while so if you want to help us keep local blogging alive you can.

We know that there are daunting obstacles we have yet to overcome and have plans for an overhaul of the network so we can focus on what we’re good at and are never in this situation again. We’re immediately going to put a halt to our expansion and start shutting down cities that we haven’t been able to keep going for whatever reason as well as our Ning site. This will allow us to take the cities that currently have vibrant communities and do everything we can to support them and help them grow. With that in mind we’re also going to be changing platforms to allow better local customizations from look and feel to features. The entire network currently is run off of a single WordPress MU install and have found there are a lot of restrictions and obstacles that come with it. So we’re going to be splitting off cities onto their own installations of WordPress 3 when it becomes available. I mention all this because we’re going to be spinning each site out onto it’s own domain starting with our original Los Angeles site. In the coming weeks expect to see a lot of changes and new features that we’ve been itching to build for ages but were hamstrung by technical hurdles. We’re extremely excited about this and can’t wait to get it in your hands.

To everyone who’s written and offered to help and especially those who have donated, we don’t even know how to thank you. We’re so amazingly humbled by you guys that we just don’t have the words to adequately express our gratitude so we’re just going say thank you and hope you understand how much it means to us. We’re extremely excited about the next steps and without your support we wouldn’t be able to take them. So seriously, thanks again everyone.

Love,
Jason, Sean, and everyone at Metblogs.

[Metblogs Authors, please be sure to read the authors forums for the most up to date info.]

It’s with a heavy heart that we have to make this post. After our post earlier this year we’ve made repeated attempts to secure either financing or a buy-out and neither of which came to fruition. Left with no other alternative we’re sadly forced to shut our doors at the end of the month. After 6 and a half years it’s been an awesome ride and we can’t thank the authors and captains enough that have made it possible. Seriously, you guys (and gals) completely rock and we’re humbled by all you’ve done to keep us going and making the sites so awesome. We’re not going to get into the nitty gritty of the finances but the rebound in online ad sales is taking it’s sweet ass time among other factors and has just put us too far personally into debt keeping the old girl afloat.

We want nothing more than to keep the sites online and going strong so if you’ve got some spare cash around and want to own the granddaddy of local news blogs drop us a line. We can be reached at sean or jason @metblogs.com. Barring a 4th quarter miracle the site will be going offline on May 31st.

Once again though we want to seriously thank everyone who’s been there for us for this crazy ride. We’re just 2 guys who started this with no budget and no idea it would have grown into the awesome community it has become. We’re going to leave you with some stats on what an all volunteer community can do when they care about where they live.

Atlanta Metblogs: 2,967 posts / 9,830 comments
Auckland Metblogs: 52 posts / 34 comments
Austin Metblogs: 2,375 posts / 2,502 comments
Azeroth Metblogs: 666 posts / 2,069 comments
Bangalore Metblogs: 1,803 posts / 7,732 comments
Bangkok Metblogs: 520 posts / 1,996 comments
Berlin Metblogs: 1,266 posts / 1,470 comments
Birmingham Metblogs: 303 posts / 257 comments
Boston Metblogs: 949 posts / 757 comments
Chennai Metblogs: 1,578 posts / 8,602 comments
Chicago Metblogs: 3,457 posts / 7,318 comments
Dallas Metblogs: 464 posts / 652 comments
Washington D.C. Metblogs: 6,984 posts / 13,633 comments
Denver Metblogs: 658 posts / 984 comments
Detroit Metblogs: 2,218 posts / 3,722 comments
Dubai Metblogs: 393 posts / 614 comments
Dublin Metblogs: 420 posts / 439 comments
Graz Metblogs: 315 posts / 222 comments
Hawaii Metblogs: 356 posts / 591 comments
Houston Metblogs: 1,177 posts / 2,111 comments
Hyderabad Metblogs: 144 posts / 204 comments
Islamabad Metblogs: 1,865 posts / 10,808 comments
Istanbul Metblogs: 519 posts / 590 comments
Karachi Metblogs: 4,811 posts / 69,567 comments
Kuala Lumpur Metblogs: 218 posts / 167 comments
Los Angeles Metblogs: 14,313 posts / 60,645 comments
Lahore Metblogs: 2,363 posts / 11,923 comments
London Metblogs: 1,579 posts / 2,341 comments
Manila Metblogs: 1,082 posts / 2,008 comments
Melbourne Metblogs: 1,826 posts / 3,424 comments
Miami Metblogs: 545 posts / 362 comments
Minneapolis Metblogs: 3,297 posts / 7,452 comments
Montreal Metblogs: 1,650 posts / 2,890 comments
Mumbai Metblogs: 781 posts / 1,585 comments
Nashville Metblogs: 544 posts / 1,399 comments
New Orleans Metblogs: 2,056 posts / 14,563 comments
New York City Metblogs: 3,338 posts / 5,364 comments
Orange County Metblogs: 1,990 posts / 3,869 comments
Orlando Metblogs: 1,067 posts / 1,972 comments
Paris Metblogs: 446 posts / 286 comments
Philadelphia Metblogs: 3,129 posts / 2,535 comments
Phoenix Metblogs: 759 posts / 547 comments
Pittsburgh Metblogs: 1,036 posts / 609 comments
Portland Metblogs: 4,912 posts / 14,701 comments
Rio de Janeiro Metblogs: 892 posts / 2,981 comments
Sacramento Metblogs: 766 posts / 1,033 comments
San Diego Metblogs: 123 posts / 101 comments
San Jose Metblogs: 1,091 posts / 711 comments
Seattle Metblogs: 7,399 posts / 9,358 comments
San Francisco Metblogs: 4,035 posts / 7,185 comments
Singapore Metblogs: 412 posts / 398 comments
Sovietunterzoegersdorf Metblogs: 26 posts / 12 comments
Spoon River Metblogs: 247 posts / 10 comments
Tokyo Metblogs: 698 posts / 1,013 comments
Toronto Metblogs: 1,604 posts / 1,951 comments
Vancouver Metblogs: 2,233 posts / 3,561 comments
Vienna Metblogs: 2,015 posts / 3,880 comments

So long, and thanks for all the fish…

Sean & Jason

Skip ahead to early 2010 and that one site turned into a network that now spans almost 60 cities around the world. The team of 10 or so bloggers we hand picked has grown into the thousands. We’ve seen some of our blogs become the focal point for their communities after major disasters and have seen some of our bloggers move on to some amazing careers because of doors these sites opened for them. We’ve won awards and been served cease and desist letters. We’ve traveled the world and met more amazing people than we had ever hoped to. It’s been a fantastic journey.

We’ve also seen the landscape change considerably. People no longer look to newspapers as the premier source of local news and most cities are filled with passionate bloggers covering their own aspects of the city in ways no one else ever could. It truly has been a local revolution and we’re incredibly proud to have played even the smallest part in that. That said we know this is only the beginning. National publications are taking a renewed interest in local and every news site is waving their local flags around, and trying to get people from those communities to help them do it. If you think things have been interesting thus far, and we do, just wait and see what the next 24-48 months will bring.

We know this is just the beginning but for the past 7 years we’ve busted our asses trying to fuel this revolution. We’ve tried things that have worked out perfectly and things that have blown up in our faces. We’ve stuck to our guns and if given those opportunities again would do the same thing. We believe in the power of local, and that is why we’re now looking for someone to help keep Metblogs moving and take it to the next levels that we have yet been able to.

Our collective talents span a broad range of expertise but business development has never been our focus. On many levels we’ve built a kick-ass global network but our ability to grow into what we really want Metblogs to become and what we deeply believe it has the potential to be has reached our personal limits, and we are aware of that. We’re looking for the right people or organizations to keep Metblogs alive and to take it where we were unable to so we are putting out this call.

If you know a thing or two about blogs and local media and think this sounds interesting, we want to talk to you. If your company is already doing something similar or complimentary and could benefit from a closer relationship with Metblogs, we want to talk to you. There are many shapes this might take, from something as simple as a new CEO or GM, to a full acquisition by the right company. Our deepest concern is for the future of the network and all the content our amazing bloggers have spent years creating, and finding a relationship that is respectful of that is extremely important to us. What that means is if you are interested in turning the sites into an SEO linkfest we are likely not interested in talking to you. However if you are interested in making some real headway and think local is the future, we definitely want to talk.

We know this is an unorthodox approach but we’ve never been the kind of guys to follow the well beaten path. Are you the person or company we’re looking for? Let us know. (we can be reached at sean or jason @metblogs.com of course)

But since we’re talking about it, might as well point out some of the changes:
- open comments (yes registration free anonymous comments are back!)
- massively reduced page weight for faster load times
- higher content to ad ratio
- less space for ads overall
- easier to understand self-serve ads
- return of the blogrolls
- and more!

Hope you enjoy, and expect more fun soon!

Behind the scenes here there is so much being worked on and I’m really excited to launch something we’ve been working on for a few months in one form or another. After reading Emergency and spending some time really looking into a lot of the issues it brought up, Jason and I realized that most of the “survival” info that was out there was focused on being in the wilderness or jam packed with “The Dems are in the white house now, clearly the country is going to fall apart any moment, let’s all buy ammo and pray until that happens.” Not that there is anything inherently wrong with either of those approaches, but they just aren’t very appealing to me as someone who lives and frequents major cities the majority of my time.

Due to this, we felt there should be a site with a strong focus on big city survival and disaster prep. With Metblogs we’ve seen a lot of things happen out of no where in our cities and seen what people had to deal with through their own eyes. This often made us think of how we would have responded if we were in that situation and more often than not we would have been very unprepared. So today we’re launching Urban Journal – a site that will both chronicle our own journey to become more prepared as well as provide useful info and tips for other city dwellers who don’t want to be caught by surprise. It’s a little bit of a different direction for us at Bode Media but we’re excited about it and looking forward to seeing where it leads. Hope you enjoy it!

If you look on the individual post page for any entry on any city Metblogs site, just above the comments you’ll see a simple line of code you can copy and paste into an entry on your own website or blog.

You can see this in action on this test on my own personal blog. Pretty cool eh?

This is super Beta at the moment, and we don’t know how it’ll work under stress or if we overlooked any bits, but as far as we can tell it’s working and we’d like to invite anyone who wants to to go ahead and try it out. If you find any problems with it, please let us know and we’ll try to fix them right away. This is really exciting for us as we think this is the first time a feature like this has been offered online, and should be a fun way for people to bring conversations from Metblogs that they find interesting back to their own sites, while still keeping a single cohesive comment thread on the main post. Enjoy!