04 March 2008

Portland Metblog

Last weekend, the entire Metblog network went through an overhaul. The old familiar site is now quite garish, big ol' MasterCard ads on the side, gray text on a white background that makes my head spin, and worst of all, one must now be a Metblogs member in order to leave comments.
A couple of folks who write for Portland's Metblog criticized the new setup on their personal blogs, inviting the wrath of the Metblog powers that be for their dissent.
Steve offered some constructive criticism on his blog More Hockey Less War.
The founder of Metblogs, Sean Bonner, dropped by and left a comment that seemed like a rational "sorry about that, hope you stick around," until the end of his comment where he informs, "I’m kinda taking the above post as your resignation for the time being. I’m sorry to see you go. If you do want to come back in the future, we’ll still be here and if not best of luck in whatever you do decide to do. Take care."
Then, another Metblogger, Brewcaster, echoed Steve's opinion and posted a link to his criticisms, resulting in a copy/paste of the same "fuck off" message from Sean, the king of the Metblogs. Can we get much more lazy and/or tacky? Come on, if you're going to be a webtator, at least take the time to write an original "fuck off" message.
There's rumors of some Metbloggers splitting off into a real home-grown Portland stuff blog, one that's not part of a multi-national chain of blogs. I'll be watching out for that, but for now, due to the general assholery of Sean Bonner, Portland Metblogs is leaving my "Portland Stuff" section. They no longer deserve those two or three hits a month they get from this blog!
Now I'm just waiting for my own comment from Sean for being a criticizing reader.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

For what it's worth, I took Sean at his word and asked him to re-enable my account. He did so right away.

The whole thing's kind of a tempest in a tea pot, but the bottom line is that Metblogs is losing writers and readers.