It's done. blog.ch is sold. To centralway, an investment holding I never heard before (but hey, I don't know many investment companies anyway...)

As I said before, it's Matthias' right to do whatever he wants with that domain. But I'm a little bit suspicious what will happen with blog.ch. Centralway won't invest money in something, where they don't get a return-on-investement and some google-ads here and there won't do it (IMHO and in my experience). So, let's see what will happen, their communicated intentions are a little vague on that.

Furthermore, I think it's a little bit strange to say:

"Wir möchten die Blogger-Community vermehrt einbeziehen, indem sie selber Ideen und Vorschläge einbringt und bei deren Umsetzung sogar aktiv mithilft.“

Maybe I understand this wrong, but that sounds like "let the community do the work, we keep the revenue and thanks for all the fish" to me... Of course, listening to community feedback is very important, but counting on others to do the work for you won't cut it.

Anyway, I don't care much about blog.ch anymore, there are alternatives like blogug.ch and slug.ch and at least blogug.ch is open for everyone to contribute (and won't ever get any ads. Promised.)

And the obligatory disclaimer: We did a lot of work for blogug.ch (Planet, Ping, Top100) and this was partly "sponsored" by Bitflux (meaning that Tobi and Beni worked on their working time on it), but there's no plan by us to make money with that or to "milk" the community somehow. It's there to be used by the community for whatever they like and we really hope there's more coming out of it. And blogug.ch was partly founded, 'cause of all the things which were happening around blog.ch and I'm very very glad we (Patrice and all the others involved) did it. With the help of blog.ch, by the way, which delivered the initial batch of blogs (and still does deliver new ones).

Matthias @ 24.05.2006 15:59 CEST
The general plan is to compensate contributors for their work on blog.ch. Don't know any details yet, it's all still in flux .-).

And yes, blog.ch delivers blog after blog after blog to blogug and SLUG. According to Patrice, 80% of blogs registered at blogug (and therefore also at slug) come from blog.ch. It's nice to see you don't mind complaining about a site that does all this work for you.


SLUG by the way gets paid to deliver blog postings to "heute".

BloggingTom @ 24.05.2006 16:10 CEST
@Matthias: Are you sure, that SLUG does get money for it?

dorftrottel @ 24.05.2006 16:16 CEST
Well roared, my lion. But a little soon, it seems to me, the Village Idiot.

Suspicion is good.. Very good, but there should also be some amount of trust. Trust in Matthias G., and that he did the right thing. I mean, who would sell their baby to just anyone coming off the street?

Granted.. CentralWay has a link to Union Bank of Switzerland as it seems, a fact that worries me too. But then again, what hasn't these days..

Besides, doesn't it worry you, that slug is so interconnected with Ringier AG now? Doesn't it worry you, that a fully commecial evening paper is hailed "the" paper of the blog-"community" of Switzerland?

We don't know yet, where blog.ch goes. I, the Village Idiot, find however, that we should give it a chance. As much as "we" appearantly give a chance to Multimillonaire M.Ringier with slugs.ch. Because he too doesn't do it for humanitarian reasons, I am certain of that..

Let's see, what they (CentralWay) want of us, stay open..

bytezh @ 24.05.2006 16:32 CEST
@matthias: bitte keine gerüchte verbreiten! ich bekomme kein geld dafür, dass SLUG bei heute eingebunden ist.

Matthias @ 24.05.2006 18:03 CEST
@Benny, Du kriegst also auf "heute" nur Werbung für SLUG, kein Geld. Danke für die Berichtigung!

maria @ 07.05.2009 10:41 CEST
And what happen now?? Do you know? I have a blog in blog.ch, and today I see another web in this domain.

(Sorry for my enlgish).