BlogNetNews.com Shut Down, Domain for Sale

Father Tim e-mailed me the other day asking if BlogNetNews.com was broken. I logged in—or tried! Sho' 'nuff, no BNN. As the South Dakota editor, I've received no pink slip or other administrative memo, so I was as surprised as TLF+. (But hey, what does unpaid help expect?)

So I go Googling and learn from BlogNetReports Oklahoma that David Mastio shut down the server last week due to dwindling ad revenue. Mastio may also be busy dealing with plagiarism at his day job, editing the Washington Times.

Quantcast stats confirm that traffic to BlogNetNews.com flatlined on Wednesday, July 14, after drawing 7K–12K visits weekly during 2010. If Quantcast can be believed, BlogNetNews.com's best traffic was in February 2008, peaking over 30K weekly visits (and that's for all aggregator sections; I don't have data specific to BNN's South Dakota channel).

The failure of the site doesn't surprise me. With South Dakota blogs helping each other out by aggregating RSS feeds in their sidebars, and with the ad-free ease of Google Reader and other personal blog aggregation services, blog-ficionados don't have much need for an out-of-state website that profits off our local production.

I would be curious to hear some post-mortem discussion of traffic benefits among local writers. Every now and then I'd get a referral from BNN, but by far my biggest sources of inclicks are the blog sites of my fellow South Dakota writers, as well as my Facebook page and KELO. Fellow South Dakota bloggers, how much referral traffic did you get from BNN? And have you noticed a decrease in traffic since the service ended last week?

The domain remains in David Mastio's name through November 29, and it is for sale. Make an offer! (Update: Estimated worth as of 2010.07.20: $29,028... same dollar figure as height of Mt. Everest in feet!)

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Other posts on BNN's demise:

• Jamie Jeffords, "BNN Is Kaput," Eye of Polyphemus (SC), 2010.07.18
• Monoblogue (MD)
• Lehigh Valley (PA)
• Cognitive Dissidence (WI)