Show me the Money

Well don’t show it to me, give it to Blipfuture, they need it.

 This is my 2000th entry. No days missed. You could say I quite like blip.

 Things have changed massively since I got here, most of my former blipmates have gone, I think of the originals there are now only 5 or 6 left. The site has changed, the original blipteam have gone, and it feels like the whole tone of the site has changed.  

Much has been written over the last month or so about how great blip is and how it must be saved, some folks have dared to suggest that actually it is quite flawed and in reality might never really work properly. I did wonder about stopping after this blip. After all, it can be a complete pain some days. However it was pointed out to me  (by H and the children) that I would regret it, and I’d miss you lot. Which is of course true. So I’m sticking about, and have pledged but what is going to happen?

 As a commercial venture, the old blip failed. The platform is good, the community is great but for whatever reason it just did not work. We can blame whoever or whatever we want but the fact remains it just did not work. To put this into perspective, according to recent comments of Fergus’ blog, there are about 1,500 active members. Project365 apparently had 160,000 active members. Take both of those figures with a pinch of salt but it does make blip look a little woeful.

Yet there must be potential, there are millions and millions of people who would use a decent picture a day, sort of photography, sort of journal site. Every new Parent, Grandparent, major project starter, keen photographer. The market must be there.

So what do we do?

We have some benefactors who have done some sort of financial deal with the liquidators to preserve the site, they have also paid for the hosting and some support. I don’t believe they are a charity and it is right that there should be some sort of payment for what they have done. There is no reason why we should have had a free ride (I am aware that many of us paid for lifetime membership/ books and all kinds of stuff under the old blip, that however has gone and is irrelevant).

We also have hosting costs which are in the ‘low thousands per month’.

To put this into perspective, we (I co own a digital agency Igentics ) could build a very similar platform to blip for under £50k. To run it for a year I would allow between £36k and £72k. That would be new, no users, no community and none of my or your previous journals. We’d be starting again. With the prospect of 1500 users it really is not worth considering (we have done, at length).

This actually makes the £180k for blip deal look like pretty good value. As long as the blipfuture team get the numbers right, as long as we all sign up and pay membership (I’m aware that not everyone can). As long as we spread the word and get the membership up a bit.

I’d like to still be blipping in another 5 and a bit years.  If it’s not actually on blip then I’ll find somewhere else but I’d hope most of you will be there as well.

 

D x