A brand new start

Photo courtesy: Yummy Supper

After almost 10 years, I finally bid farewell to Xanga. 

In terms of functionality, this old buddy hasn't changed much over the past decade... which unfortunately is a crime of gigantic proportion in the Age of Web 2.0. In spite of this stagnancy, I do feel that Xanga is no longer the Xanga that I used to love. 

One of its major changes is the massive insertion of ads in non-premium blogs. It's all very understandable - given Xanga's ad-supported revenue model - though I must admit that I was more than a little shocked to see the banner ad of the movie "3D Sex and Zen" (= 3D 肉蒲團)  appearing on my Xanga site last year. Parents who have just learnt that their teenage kids are engaging in compensated dating shall be able to understand my feelings. :0

Offering Friends Lock is probably Xanga's fatal mistake. It absolutely annoys me whenever I find out that  my subscribers have locked their sites, which means that they can see my site but I can't view theirs (I can send them friend requests in the hope of gaining access to their sites, but I don't really want to do this to total strangers). Blogging is about sharing; if you are not ready to share, why bother to blog? (remember macro_patrick's famous comment, "If you want privacy, you should not write in Xanga" :P). Xanga has become a much less  lively community when people are keeping their doors shut.

So here I am, on Blogger! Hopefully this will be a more exciting and interesting space for my inner narcissist. I have even renamed my blog (don't you love it?? ;P) to signify the new start. I will transfer some of my tea review entries from Xanga to here later on. 

Though I have left Xanga, I still hope it can survive in the mercilessly competitive world of Internet. Maybe one day, it will give me the reasons to return.

New blog entries on the way! Stay tuned! :)