Sunday, May 2, 2010

Today.com is dead!

I saw a comment that Today Exile David Gerard posted in a few places that today.com appears to be dead, with the domain name sold to MSNBC for the Today Show.

Ding, dong, today.com is dead ....

And we no longer have to worry about duplicate content.

I wonder if they paid the people who stayed with them to the end.

Anyone have any inside information?

22 comments:

Laura May 2, 2010 at 9:26 PM  

Ahh ... That must be why Retro Yak moved his blog. No inside info, but ... Karma is sweet!

Ravyn May 2, 2010 at 10:07 PM  

They're not dead. Just on a new domain name; I would assume they moved everything they'd already had over, given that they were still charging their 110% when I finally started making arrangements to buy out, right before the change took place. (Oh, the stories I could tell you about that....)

Ms Terri,  May 2, 2010 at 10:11 PM  

Indeed!

It must have just happened recently, because I tried looking for one of my old posts on Google, and the post was still there in the cache. I'm not sure, but I think the cache only goes back about a week.

P.S. I was just thinking they probably got a fortune for selling the domain name, so maybe they haven't gotten all their Karmic desserts yet.

Ms Terri May 2, 2010 at 10:13 PM  

Oops, simultaneous posting.

My "indeed" was in response to Laura's comment.

Ravyn, what's their new domain name?

I'd love to hear your stories, if you're comfortable telling them.

Ms Terri May 2, 2010 at 10:19 PM  

Hmmm. If they transferred my material to another domain, it's either very well hidden, or it hasn't been indexed yet. I can't find it via Google.

Ravyn May 2, 2010 at 10:51 PM  

I could get a full article about what happened. The short version is, once they stopped paying anything but affiliate links and AdSense, and I found a new place to host the blogs, I set up the new site, paid off (trying a little to negotiate first), Violette helped me find the export file, I discovered that while they can apparently export just fine to the new domain, it doesn't work on a standard Wordpress blog, so now I'm copy-pasting in all my old posts by hand. The positive thinker in me notes that at least my categories are a lot more organized now.

Valerie David May 3, 2010 at 6:39 PM  

I'm curious to know what the new domain is as well. I'd be really surprised if they moved a bunch of stuff from dead blogs over, but I guess that depends on how difficult it is.

Ms. Terri, you're right, they probably got a pretty penny for that domain name. Ugh.

Anonymous,  May 4, 2010 at 6:58 AM  

I hope they are really done with for good. I want to know if they move our own blogs to the their new domain..

David Gerard May 4, 2010 at 2:08 PM  

"I discovered that while they can apparently export just fine to the new domain, it doesn't work on a standard Wordpress blog."

They just buggered about with the XML export format. I fiddled with it a bit ... then got notnews.today.com to import to newstechnica.com by editing some of the checks out of the PHP importer code in WordPress. Don't try this at home ;-)

Hindleyite was posting on retroyakking.today.com as late as last month. I asked if he knew about this. Wonder if they told their remaining writers.

In the meantime, I'm compiling a list of everything Internet Supply, Inc. (that's the company) does. Though I'm not going through their domains list, my eyes might catch a social disease.

David Gerard May 4, 2010 at 2:18 PM  

Oh, excuse me if I LOL:

http://openjurist.org/333/f3d/138/cat-internet-services-inc-v-providence-washington-insurance-co

Ms Terri,  May 4, 2010 at 4:15 PM  

Oh yeah, I posted about that lawsuit a few posts down (in the comments).

P.S. LOL-ing at "my eyes might catch a social disease."

P.P.S. Still shaking my head at how I inadvertently got involved with a porn company.

P.P.P.S. Out of curiosity, I was trying to find out how much the domain name sold for. I couldn't find that info (though I found a blog post about the sale) -- but based on past high-value domain name sales, I would guess the price might have been in the millions.

flit May 4, 2010 at 6:09 PM  

They won't be missed.

Rather find out that they totally went under though - preferably as a result of a lawsuit or twenty

Anonymous,  May 4, 2010 at 10:09 PM  

I've googled for my old posts and not found them yet. I'd like to see them go to jail, but I'm not holding my breath until it happens.

Anonymous,  May 5, 2010 at 12:20 PM  

You know such things are very common with free blogging plateform... but no one knows when it has to happen... but my self little bit lucky just started the my own bloging plateform http://tricksnhacking.com some five months ago leaving advancetechnology.today.com, because of their policies...

Nida Sea,  May 9, 2010 at 5:40 PM  

Hm, I'm guessing only certain writers were warned. I had a blog there and didn't even know it was gone till I checked yesterday. Oh well I suppose.

Unknown May 9, 2010 at 7:55 PM  

Well, good riddance to them. I'm still not over the fact they disabled my account right before payout. I was still able to edit my blog though and took all the pictures off. I still get notifications occasional but it's only for spam comments.

Anonymous,  May 13, 2010 at 5:17 PM  

I heard that today.com was paying the exiles to get press.
Make sense all that bad press.I think it was a brilliant marketing plan.Ms Terri and Flit made a deal with some at today.com to build the exiles.Why do you think there you never saw adsense?Do you really think that people would waste that much time if there were not being paid.I heard there were a few more.But Kudos to Ms Terrie and Flit you outsmarted us all.
Fyi Check out the whois on todayexiles.com

Ms Terri,  May 18, 2010 at 2:36 PM  

Yeah, you caught us red-handed. We're on the payroll of Today.com!

Ha ha.

By the way, the reason I "waste" all this time, is that I really don't like being taken advantage of or seeing other people being taken advantage of. I've always hated scams and dishonesty. If even one person was warned off of Today.com, then my time was hardly wasted.

The URL here is todayexiles.blogspot.com, not todayexiles.com, but I'm going to follow your tip and see who registered todayexiles.com. I would guess it was one of the various permutations of today.com, and that they registered it to pre-empt any of us from using it -- a very common tactic in the corporate world. Hold on, let me check ...

Yup. It's registered to the optimisically named "Revenue Partner" at PO Box 29 / Morrisville, PA 19067. That's our pals at today.com, alias Cat Internet Services, alias a whole bunch of names not printable on a G-rated blog.

Ms Terri,  May 25, 2010 at 12:33 PM  

It looks like they didn't even notify people before shutting the blogs down. I found this: what to do if your blogging network shuts down without your knowledge

I've also been looking to see if I could find my old blogs anywhere, on a new domain, and I can't. I'd actually be very surprised if Today transferred the old blogs over to a new space. I'm guessing that they are probably glad to be out of the blogging business, and are probably going back to their core competencies: selling domain names, and providing and cataloging internet porn.

Anonymous,  May 25, 2010 at 1:16 PM  

Ms Terri,
Our company needs a site like this built out .The whole "scam" idea was brilliant.Do you do this full time?I read the site sold for millions.We would love to use your services.
Please let us know how to contact you.

David Gerard June 5, 2010 at 5:51 AM  

Yeah, the old Today.com blogs appear to be moved to blogdog.com. One DMCA coming right up!

David Gerard June 5, 2010 at 6:14 AM  

https://www.rackco.com/dmca.php

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