Absolutely shameful.

Darren had said these comments, about spamming and content lifting but people participating in the comments thread.

This is false by all my means, and I leave rest to Darren to decide. You have seen the blogs we are pulling up the content for, I know we are bit slow but still for the 200-250 posts we have on the network, none is copied.

You interpreted what Darren said completely wrong. What he’s saying is that every single weblog entry is basically a one paragraph comment on ANOTHER article from ANOTHER site, and then you link out quickly. Original content = long entries with thought-provoking ideas. He wasn’t saying you are copying other entries, just that your sites are glorified linklogs.

There are great paid and open source web publishing applications out (MT and Wordpress, to name a few) and it boggles my mind she decided to code everything herself. Maybe instead of spending all that time coding a proprietary weblog platform, she should have written some entries on a few of the weblogs that launched with absolutely no content.

>>Jesse – what I noticed is that every single blog is basically just the first paragraph of an article and then a link to the rest. Virtually zero original content.

This is false by all my means, and I leave rest to Darren to decide. You have seen the blogs we are pulling up the content for, I know we are bit slow but still for the 200-250 posts we have on the network, none is copied.

>>Lyndon — Unless of course you are in the black hat – scraper – spam blogging arena,
Its just so easy to say anyone is a thief, spammer, black hat… Cool.

We welcome criticism, we were wrong in few things. We are trying to improve things, and are more determined to get to our readers. But don`t know how to react to these kinds of criticism.
Anyways .. will see you guys around more often now.

She sure has streched herself a bit far with this launch, working hard on developing the technical side (Yes, she is programming it herself too).

For those thinking she writes everything herself, I know she hired bloggers some time ago as I was briefly asked to give my opinion on some of their work.

An unknown male blogger from India and everyone thinks it is a one man show and you can read hype with no substance between the lines.

Will be interesting to see what people think now that some of the story about a very friendly and interesting person with many friends in the Internet community comes out.

My Indian friends tonight at dinner told me Nandini is a female name.

I think it’s great he is trying it and although I have no doubt it will fail in its present make up, it may lead to something else that is successful. You’re right, at least the bloke is giving it a go and you have to admire him for that, but you have to be realistic and honest when giving feedback.

It seems there is a common mistake with the recent epidemic of blogs within our tiny sector of the blogosphere – how many blogs are there? How many of them do you read? Think you have your finger on the pulse – and the mistake is this: Failure to ask “what is this blog for?”

or even

Who is this blog for?

Is it to get you rich or is it for the readers? I don’t know who this dude is aiming at, what is his target sector and I don’t mean by subject, forget subject. Forget about sectors, areas, segments and all that rubbish and think of People. It’s people who read blogs not sectors. If you are not for the people, then odds are you are going to fail. Unless of course you are in the black hat – scraper – spam blogging arena,

……but that’s another story.

I like the look he’s got going, it may be the same on all the blogs, but if it is clean and it works, then why mess with it? Also, I think WIN blogs look very similar, with the exception of, like, 5.

I hope I can remember to check in now and then. I have found that online friends tend to be every bit as loyal as offline, and I like making new friends. I’m spreading my love around ;) All the way to India…

Just kidding! No, I’m not successful and I only have 7blogs and they are non-income generating blogs – and, MY OH MY how time can fly keeping up and I always end up going on tangents myself :D

Sure I was disappointed! What a terrible “Grand Opening” and lack of business saavy (imho) by Nandini in keeping everyone informed – or rather NOT informed.. I’m sure there are friends or internet cafes that posts could have been made or emails to popular blogs that could have forwarded messages about server problems and other delays that were being experienced etc etc.

But, I try to get along with everybody, never hold a grudge and famous for a short attention span .. So, I’ll probably forget about all of this tomorrow. Yah – it looks more like 75% of bogus blogs that look like shells, but .. Day One .. Design Version 0.1 .. Ask me what I think of the content and the instablogs.com network in 2006?

I took the time to add all of the RSS feeds into my bloglines, and I’ll eventually widdle out the ones that don’t interest me over the next few times (or, probably just reclass them into my ‘Don’t read anymore’ folder of subscriptions). Good or bad publicity, it’s still publicity, right? It’s a good start to grab people’s attentions who is currently taking the time to look at the blogs. I too wish them all the best, and will probably participate on a few blog topics that interest me.

No more talk of my idiocy here on this site. If anyone wants to flame or console me my AIM screen name is CLOMIG.