ORblogs

Save ORBlogs

I returned from yurting to see that ORblogs is going to be shut down. :-(
I then read in my rss reader that ORblogs might be resurrected. :-)

Thank you for reading and contributing to the site. ORblogs has stopped gathering post excerpts from Oregon blogs, though the current weblog directory will be available for another 30 days.

When I started ORblogs in March 2003, there weren’t many good ways to find bloggers living in a particular area. And because I had recently moved to Corvallis, I wanted to learn what I could from people living near me. The site personally put me in touch with bloggers across the state, taught me a lot about Oregon and its cities (including Corvallis), and I hope the site did the same for others. I feel ORblogs served an important role for Oregon blogging by gathering independent voices across all spectrums into one place where everyone shared a common geography.

I’m shutting ORblogs down now because the site continues to grow and the job of maintaining the site at the level I feel is necessary to keep it valuable has grown with it, putting it out of the bounds of a hobby. I wasn’t able to make ORblogs self-sustaining financially (let alone turn it into a job), and I can no longer devote the time to the site that it needs to grow. Blogging has changed significantly in five years, and blogging is no longer a hobby for many—it’s a job. Commercial blogging isn’t as interesting to me as the personal web and that factored into my decision as well.

Thanks again for making ORblogs what it has been over the years. Please take a last look through the directory, find your favorite Oregon blogs, and subscribe to them in your newsreader if you haven’t already. There are some spectacular voices in Oregon blogging that I will now have to read another way. I still believe it’s important to read locally while I read globally, and I hope you agree and continue to make the effort.

— Paul Bausch (9/4/2008)

ORBlogs

In short, John Metta of Hood River has taken up the gauntlet and is moving forward—at an accelerated clip—on figuring out how to bring an Oregon blog aggregator back online. He’s got a great plan, he’s working on creating a project site, and he’s established a mailing list to discuss ORBlogs 2.0. You can also follow John on Twitter as Mettadore.

John is in touch with Paul Bausch, ORBlogs creator. So hopefully, we’ll hear more soon.

KATU and OregonLive.com both have articles on the closure of ORblogs.com.

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