The End of Vox

Vox is closing on September 30, 2010 (via closing.vox.com, great subdomain, btw!)

Vox launched in October, 2006 and is closing down less than 4 years later. Plenty of people have been blogging for 5 years or more, so really, 4 years is not a long time. There’s some information on moving your Vox blog to Posterous or WordPress.com. (I’d pick WordPress.com, they have a longer track record and I see them lasting longer than Posterous, and they also provide a path to export from WordPress.com to eventually host your own WordPress install. Truth be told though, Posterous is becoming a bit of a powerhouse, so who knows…)

This highlights something I’ve been an advocate of for quite a while, owning your content online, and owning your identity online.

By “owning” I’m referring more to owning the place where your content lives. There are prolific producers on the web nowadays who put everything into other people’s baskets. They post on Twitter, FaceBook, Flickr, Blogger, Posterous, and all sorts of other sites… none owned by them. If you started a blog in 2006 on Vox and it grew to something huge, you’d now be in the boat with all the other Vox users looking for a new home.

Moving from one domain to another and maintaining your momentum, making sure people know you’ve moved, and are able to find you can be done, but it’s best done if you have control over the old domain, or at least if you can control the old posts, perhaps pointing people to the new home. When services shut down this may not be possible. I’m not sure yet how Vox will handle this…

I wish all the Vox users good luck in their search for a new home… don’t forget that your own blog on your own domain is always an option.