Bad news for blogs and websites that didn’t have big budgets and wanted to a)promote their content and brand names and b)get some excellent, solid free content for their sites. Repost.us, the content platform in which The Moderate Voice, Crooks and Liars, AFP, the Global Post and other blogs and news sites participated, is no more:
Repost is Shutting Down.
When we created Repost, we recognized that the existing syndication models were broken and served only a fraction of the web. We set out to change that, and we achieved a lot – 8500 sites, 8 million articles in our system, and we served content to over 100,000 domains in more than 100 countries.Unfortunately, although the technology worked well, the business model didn’t. We’ve been unable to raise additional funding, and as a result we will be closing down the Repost service. We are looking at building an open source version of Repost as a WordPress plugin. If anybody would like to fund that development, please contact us.
TMV started experimenting with Repost.us — using its posts and posting on it for syndication a limited number of posts — in November 2012. It did a fill a gap on TMV in helping us to provide some superb content. I used to write for The Christian Science Monitor from Madrid in the late 70s, and was excited about using their content available on Repost but the CSM, like some others, pulled out of it. TMV never made one cent over posting Repost content, but we noticed a slight increase in hits. But, mostly, for TMV it was about branding and also filling a problem in getting writers who actually write on the site.
TMV has had a list of writers almost as big as the state of Rhode Island, but due to writer burnout, plus the increasing toxicity of our politics which is particularly repelling to voters closer to the center, we had a problem getting writers who signed up to actually write. Repost helped fill that gap with often great content. (TMV pays for a limited amount of syndicated content including some columns and cartoons).
More from Repost:
What happens now?
Effective today we will disable new embeds and disable the ingestion of new content. We have also modifed our scripts to remove the repost button from sites in our network.
On July 31 2014 we will shutdown the Repost api servers and all embedded content will cease to be available. We plan to keep our http://s.tt/ link shorter active through the end of the year so links in the embed code will still reach the source article.
All other api calls will be directed to a service that returns an error (this so your site doesn’t hang trying to talk to a nonexistent server). This server will be live until 12/31/2014. Shortly before this server is finally remove it will start returning a script that shows an alert warning sites they have redundant code installed.
What does this mean? It means yet another Internet venture created by thoughtful and motivated people proved easier in concept than in reality.
From the standpoint of TMV, it means we either go back to posting more original content and paid syndicated content, or there will be big gaps. And, more than ever, TMV needs thoughtful writers who’ll actually write (not just do one post and vanish) and who might like the idea of writing serious posts heading up to the 2016 Presidential election year (TMV’s writers have ranged in age from 23 to 90).
It means one less source of getting our brand out, one less source of excellent content for a site that has NO big bankroll (we’ve even held off on a fundraiser and rarely get donations). And it makes it more difficult to grow at a time when Google has changed the way it ranks some content and social media and easier-to-do-Facebook make fewer people write for and read blogs.
But TMV has been plugging away at it since 2003 and will continue to do so. But Repost, and the potential it had to use good content and to promote a brand name, is no more. So we just have to work harder and more than ever welcome with open arms thoughtful people who seriously want to contribute.
To the helpful folks at Repost: we appreciate your efforts and vision. And we’re sure that your future efforts will meld intelligent concept with business success and reality.
A big, fat thank you for your efforts is due from TMV and all who posted on your site or used your content.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.