Once upon a time, long before Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook, there was a web blogging service called Xanga.
This site launched in 1999 originally as a space to share book and music reviews, then quickly became a popular blogging site for teenagers of the 2000's. At the height of its popularity Xanga reached 30 millions users. But it's been declining ever since. Now Xanga must raise $60,000 by July 15 to prevent permanent shut down.
$60,000 seems minimal in comparison to the zillion dollar deals of Instagram and Tumblr, but according to a recent blog post, the CEO of Xanga, John Hiler, aims to convert the blogging service into an open source format similar to Wordpress and then require a monthly subscription from users to host their blogs. "Since blogging memberships would be paid, we wouldn't have any ads on the blogs," Hiler writes. He describes it as "giving our bloggers an ad-free experience."
The Xanga Relaunch Campaign will run until July 15.
But fear not, bloggers of the late '90s and early 2000s: Xanga will provide users free downloads of their blog posts so they can archive and document all their teenage angst in a convenient zip file.