Serendipity35

Typepad was a blogging service that was launched back in 2003. I used it for years as a fast blogging platform. I was less and less serious about using it as I  moved to other, more robust platforms such as Wordpress, Blogger and Serendipity (used for this blog) emerged.

I don't think I posted anything there in the past year, but I happened to click the bookmark for my site this past week and found that the URL was replaced with networksolutions.com/typepad, which told me that "Typepad has closed—your next chapter starts here. Your previous provider has shut down, but your online presence can still thrive. Partner with Network Solutions to keep your domain, website, and brand moving forward. Unfortunately, you can no longer access your files, and there will be no extensions beyond the end of service date. All of the blog data will be purged."

The platform had been through some changes over the years and stopped accepting new signups at the end of 2020. In August 2025, Typepad announced it would be shutting down on September 30, 2025.

I'm not very upset about the shutdown because I wasn't really using it. I have 10 other blogs that I post to. (Yes, that is ridiculous. Take a look here.) What does upset me about it shutting down is that it's a reminder that all the content you're posting online (particularly on a platform you don't own and control) can go away quickly - "purged" as in the case of Typepad.
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Typepad's shutdown can be attributed to several factors that often affect online services. While there isn't a single definitive cause, here are some probable reasons.

Changing market landscape: The blogging and website hosting space has become increasingly competitive, with many platforms offering free or low-cost services. This shift likely put pressure on Typepad to adapt and stay attractive to users.

Ownership changes: Typepad changed hands over the years, moving from its original owners to Endurance International Group and then to SAY Media. Such transitions can sometimes lead to changes in strategy or resources allocated to the platform.

Technical issues and support challenges: Some users reported issues with the platform, including difficulties with importing content to other services and concerns about support responsiveness. These challenges might have contributed to a decline in user satisfaction.

Business model sustainability: Like many businesses, Typepad needed to balance its offerings with revenue. As the market evolved, maintaining a viable business model might have become increasingly difficult.

For context, similar challenges are not unique to Typepad. Many businesses face hurdles such as adapting to market changes, managing growth, and ensuring customer satisfaction. A broader look at common reasons for business failures includes factors like lack of market demand, insufficient capital, and inability to pivot in response to changing conditions.

Reading Amber Mac's newsletter this week, I saw a connection with something I was writing on one of my other blogs about this idea of having content "go viral." It sounds like a great thing. But does it come at a cost?

Yes, it's tempting to jump on TikTok trends and participate in the bite-size-ification of social, but it's also possible to produce a steady and consistent flow of valuable, high-quality content that never goes viral. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to see our video views rise, but it's not essential that we trend. I think we all know how that game works. Say something controversial or do something outrageous, and the algorithms will thank you for it.

In my opinion, that spike in attention might be a win, but it's a short-term win. In other words, not everyone should go viral. If that's what you're chasing, it could be a soul-crushing experience where you lose yourself and your authentic community along the way.  - Amber Mac

Bloggers often want their posts to go "viral." The word “viral” made a leap from medical terminology to broader cultural usage in the late 20th century, particularly in the context of marketing and media. I assumed that it was social media that moved the term from medical usage, but it is actually a bit earlier than the explosion of social media. In 1989, The Oxford English Dictionary cites the earliest use of “viral” to describe the rapid spread of information, marking its first known non-medical usage.

The term gained traction in marketing in 1999, especially “viral marketing,” which described campaigns that spread quickly and organically—much like a virus. In the early 2000s, phrases like “going viral” and “viral video” emerged. and by 2004, “going viral” was used to describe content that rapidly gained popularity online. From 2009 onward, viral became mainstream, fueled by the rise of social media platforms and shareable content.

It is a good and powerful metaphor. Like a biological virus, digital content can replicate and spread uncontrollably. That semantic link made “viral” the perfect word to describe the phenomenon of explosive online popularity.

I don't think I have had a "viral post," though I have had some posts that seem to get more views over the years than most of mine. But "viral" is when the surge of views hits all at once.

Can you push a post into the land of viral? I don't think so, but you can find articles about "how to," like 21 key elements for viral blog posts or explore 32 proven tactics to boost your chances - but there are certainly no guarantees.

Those kinds of articles will suggest things to do like these: Know your audience and tailor your tone, topic, and style to what resonates with them. Tap into trending issues, emotional stories, or highly useful how-tos. Use eye-catching images. Share across platforms with tailored captions and hashtags. Use analytics to see what’s getting attention and tweak accordingly. All of those make sense, and I tend to employ them most of the time.

Some suggestions probably do increase your chances of viality, but go against my own blogging philosophy: Make it skimmable. Short paragraphs, bullet points, and bolded key phrases. Engage influencers. Reach out to people with large followings who might share your post. I don't do email marketing, other than if someone decides to follow my blog via email notifications.

"Viral" is hardly the only medical term that is now in broader usage. If you're curious about that, check out this other blog.

Image by JamesDeMers from Pixabay

The social media platforms are finally turning off the opportunities for President Trump and many others to pump out misinformation and foment violence. Twitter and Facebook get the most attention because of their audience sizes, but there are lots of other places less obvious for those conversations and misinformation disguised as truthful information.

The right-wing app Parler has been booted off the Internet over ties to the siege on the U.S. Capitol. As the AP reported, "...but not before digital activists made off with an archive of its posts, including any that might have helped organize or document the riot. Amazon kicked Parler off its web-hosting service, and the social media app promptly sued to get back online, telling a federal judge that the tech giant had breached its contract and abused its market power. It was a roller coaster of activity for Parler, a 2-year-old magnet for the far right that welcomed a surge of new users. It became the No. 1 free app on iPhones late last week after Facebook, Twitter and other mainstream social media platforms silenced President Donald Trump’s accounts over comments that seemed to incite Wednesday’s violent insurrection."

Is that an attack on freedom of speech?

As Amber MacArthur wrote recently in her newsletter, "It's easy to say that moderating content is an attack on freedom of speech, but many fail to realize that freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. Moreover, private businesses do have the right to set their own rules of engagement, which in the case of social media platforms is often outlined in their Terms of Service."

Germany - which has tighter controls on hate speech than the U.S. - nevertheless had Chancellor Angela Merkel saying that Trump’s eviction from Twitter by the company is “problematic.” Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, sent a kind of mixed message saying that operators of social media platforms “bear great responsibility for political communication not being poisoned by hatred, by lies and by incitement to violence” but also that the freedom of opinion is a fundamental right of “elementary significance” and that “This fundamental right can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators — not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms. Seen from this angle, the chancellor considers it problematic that the accounts of the U.S. president have now been permanently blocked.”

Opinions in America are probably also pro and con with people on either side and some who are partially on both sides, like Merkel's opinion.

 Jillian C. York says "Users, not tech executives, should decide what constitutes free speech online. Social media companies aren’t very good at moderating speech. So why do we ask them to?" She continues: "...While some pundits have called the decision unprecedented—or “a turning point for the battle for control over digital speech,” as Edward Snowden tweeted —it’s not: not at all. Not only do Twitter and Facebook regularly remove all types of protected expression, but Trump’s case isn’t even the first time the platforms have removed a major political figure. Following reports of genocide in Myanmar, Facebook banned the country’s top general and other military leaders who were using the platform to foment hate. The company also bans Hezbollah from its platform because of its status as a US-designated foreign terror organization, despite the fact that the party holds seats in Lebanon’s parliament. And it bans leaders in countries under US sanctions."

I think Snowden's sense of a turning point is correct, but it's not clear into which direction we will be turning.

It is easy to be seduced by statistics. I know several friends who have websites and blogs and are rather obsessed with their web statistics. They are always checking to see how many hits the site gets or what pages or posts are most popular or what search terms are being used to find them.

Social media has encouraged this with Likes and Retweets and Reposts. Our smartphones love to send us notifications that someone has engaged with some piece of our content.

I got this alert last month about another blog of mine:

Your page is trending up

Your page clicks increased by more than 1,000% over the usual daily average of less than 1 click.

https://poetsonline.blogspot.com/2010/12/moving-into-winter-solstice-poems.html

Yes, their "possible explanations for this trend" are correct. It is a post about the winter solstice, so you might expect that interest would increase around mid-December. When a topic, such as "winter solstice," is trending generally, you will get more attention to your page. I also made some updates to the post and Google and other spiders scurrying around the web notice that. 

I have become less interested in the stats as the years have passed. In the early days of my blogging, I was much more interested in those hits, impressions, and visitors. Nowadays, I only check at year's end.

At the end of 2019, Serendipity35 added 3,595,439 hits to bring its total over the years to a rather daunting 104,596,905. In December 2019, we averaged 11,478 hits daily. It's more sobering to note that the average number of daily visits was 2722.

What I find more interesting in the analytics are things like which countries are visiting the site (see image) and the terms people searched that led them to the blog.