299 ‘active’ Lotus blogs updated hourly, what it means.

There was a lot of talk about a month back about getting to the 300 blog mark on Planet Lotus. It is an exciting milestone but that number when it is reached only means that there is 300 'active' blogs checked on an hourly basis. Over the past year there have been many sites dropped and activity, or lack there of, is the most common reason. One of the services I provide with the sites is the knowledge that the blogs listed are relevant, active and the information is what fellow Loti would enjoy reading.

Reasons for delisting range from:

• Request of the author... stage fright
• Sites that are not blogs; news sites that were just duplicating news provide by blogs
• Sites that require a log in to view their content
• Change in career and blog content.

Back to the term 'active'. It can mean many things to many people. I go by the last blog post. If its been over a year since the last post there is no reason for my server to check it every hour. If the person wants to get back into it they can send me an email and I only need to change the publish field from 0 to 1 to start checking again, it’s that simple.

Now for the gray area, what about situations that fall outside activity and the reasons above, i.e., Alan Lepofsky . It was easy to delist Gia Lyons, she blogged about social networking, she wasn't on the site long and didn’t' have the large core Lotus following... in comparison to Alan and Adam Gartenberg for that matter... What to do with those guys!?!?  I view then as part of the family and I don't think anyone minds me keeping them listed for the near future. If Adam’s DB2 posts raise in volume, email me. I listen. You are my customer and if you think a blog no longer fits, I’ll look into it.

If you are interested in looking at the 18 delisted blogs, they can found here:  http://planetlotus.org/blogs/  select Sort, Blogs: Unpublished.