Ending

Blipfoto Limited today went into Liquidation after several days of growing concern and speculation about the company. Its founder, Joe Tree had been making significant efforts to save the site and more importantly the community built around it for many months. His earliest attempts to improve cashflow might well be traced back to the lifetime membership initiative and forwards to the most recent Polaroid partnership. It is however, this latest episode in Blip's history which troubles me the most. There are aspects to it which make sense and others which don't at all. But what happens next will be telling.
 
Putting aside the 'marmite' (love it or hate it) white background that was introduced together with the other aspects of the makeover, the partnership was put in place on what seemed at the time to be a very sound basis. A big name brand had been brought on board to lend big pockets to support a growing name in social media, for the benefit of all. Or so it seemed. Remember that Blipfoto had been struggling for some time with unreliability and dropouts as the servers groaned under the weight of the site's success. The preceding transfer to new servers will have hit the coffers. In some respects, quite how such a network with free entry and no advertising continued for as long as it has is astonishing. Its very survival for those years is a testament to the management by Blip Central and to the community, who in good numbers, must have dipped into their pockets and chipped in every year.
 
Nevertheless, here we are less than three months after the Polaroid partnership's unveiling and to all intents and purposes it is game over and seemingly only a matter of time until the switch is pulled on what must be thousands of collective blip years, balloons, stars and hearts. It leaves me begging the question: what have Polaroid brought to the party? As far as is evident, they've brought a new look and feel to the website, alienated a good number of blippers (who either have or just threatened to leave) and caused a great deal of expense to Blip Central by requiring a re-design and not just to the site, but all the connected apps too. Just as that process is nearing completion after all that investment, the company is allowed to fold!
 
For around 10 days, nothing had been seen or heard from Blip Central staff members. Blip journals stopped being updated, twitter feeds fell silent as have the phones and email support. Even now the news of the liquidation has broken, no-one seems to be saying anything - at all. It just doesn't seem right. Why the continued silence? Surely someone has something to say about it? Yet still twitter feeds and Facebook timelines are empty. Perhaps it is too early?
 
Beloved and I went through a voluntary liquidation (on the receiving end) ten years ago and it was business as usual up until the last minute, until the court officer was actually on site, most of us had no idea it was coming. There was no 10 day silence period for us.
 
I suspect we have not seen the last of this community. It won't continue in the same way and won't be managed by the same company, but I suspect the fat lady isn't waiting in the wings just yet. Its not much more than a feeling, just keep the faith... 
 
And just before I go, huge thanks are due to Lumpysimon for his Blipfoto Importer which has enabled me to export all my 1200 or so blips to Wordpress for safe-keeping and my thoughts on 365 Project, which seems to be attracting blippers by the cartload: it's not the same, how could it be a patch on this great community of ours. I might well be found there if I'm proven wrong, but I'm sitting this one out for the foreseeable future...
 

Happy blipping and long may it continue.