Saturday, November 26, 2011

And Then There Was One

They never sent a warning beforehand although they had our e-mail addresses.

One day everything was there, intact, and the next day everything had suddenly disappeared. All those words, all the friends, and all those memories. 

Long before Facebook was shoved in my face by a close friend back in September 2007 in which I rather reluctantly embraced it, I belonged to a similar social networking group called Friendster, where I was reunited with a few old friends, some who go back way into the crazy days of pig-tailed childhood (one of them, at least - my hair was always kept short as a child) Such good times. A little later into the social networking bandwagon, they came out with a feature known as Friendster Blogs. As I only had a miserable and erratic dial up connection back then (2005), knowledge about what the internet had to offer was rather limited, so I had no idea that Blogger (then known as Blogspot? - apparently not) even existed. 

I had lots of stories to tell back then, and Friendster Blogs provided the perfect avenue for it. I typed out and posted my very first post at exactly 10:22 pm on April 11, 2005, which told one of the many silly stories I had shelved up in my mind. That blog led a rather active albeit private life until April of 2008, when I decided to revert my 2 and a half readers from there to this blog, which by then already had a life of it's own. It led a rather quiet life after that, especially since Facebook gained popularity and Friendster took a backseat, although I did visit it occasionally.

A few months ago, they revamped the whole of Friendster from a social networking site to a site that caters to games. I don't have anything against games, but did they have to delete everything? I don't care too much about the profile itself, but the blog was something I truly cared about. It had a story of my late grandfather, some old stories from the mad days of university life to some stories when I first started working and a whole lot of idiotic observations on life (Due to the 2.5 readers there, I was prone to even more silliness there than I am here, plus I was also younger back then. Duh!)

It saddens me that all those stories I wrote back then are now in an online graveyard somewhere, and how I was not able to rescue them on time. While I have not exactly forgotten the incidents or the stories, recreating them is just not possible.

9 comments:

  1. Aww, I'm so sorry :(

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  2. Me too. I'd be devastated if I lost my blog

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  3. Orhan and nursemyra: Thanks :)

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  4. They just don't care about the people that supported and made them their profits.

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  5. Yes, that sure looks like it.

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  6. Have you tried emailing them? Is it definitely lost?

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  7. Wow - it horrifies me to think of my blog being deleted without notice. I wonder if there's a way to back it up somewhere?

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  8. I had been thinking of doing that blog to book thing, and made the decision after reading this not to put it off any longer - I am working on the 2006 edition right now.

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  9. King Of Scurf: I didn't e-mail them myself, but I trawled the internet on how to retrieve the missing blog and ended up in forums where a whole bunch of people were airing similar grievances. Thanks for the suggestion, though, maybe I'll check with them via e-mail.

    SecretAgentWoman: Yeah, I think the blog to book is a good method on backing up the blog. I'll need to search for other alternatives as well...

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