Has Amatomu lost its mojo?
With Vincent and Matthew, the two co-founders and creators, gone – has anyone else noticed that Amatomu seems to have almost completely lost its sense of community? It’s become almost sterile… a directory, like Yahoo when it first started. Plus it’s become flooded with some sites that really aren’t blogs who are clearly using Amatomu for its analytics functions (and to see how they compare to the mighty keo).
Whether this is because of the two creators leaving, or the local blogosphere becoming boring, static and less-engaged with itself, remains to be seen. A-list bloggers (Mike, Nic, Charl, Tyler, Eric and even Matthew and Vincent) do seem to be blogging less these days. Although all of them have real business to run, or at the very least real jobs.
I’m not for a minute suggesting that Jason Norwood-Young is not an adequate replacement… far from it… I haven’t met him (at least I don’t think I have), but everyone I speak to speaks very highly of him.
It’s just that with the hype-duo of Matt and Vin gone, it feels like Amatomu has lost a very important part of its DNA – it needs some sort of reinvention.
btw… Nic has a very interesting post about bloggers all blogging about blogging.
…and Mandy’s also noticed that nobody seems to be home at Amatomu.
Jason Norwood-Young Aug 21
Hi Hilton
Indeed, Matt and Vince moving on has left a deep gap in the M&G Online team. This is my third week at the M&G, and I admit that I’m still getting on top of our 11 web sites. However we’re working hard to catch up to the high pace of innovation, creativeness and genius that were the trademarks of the Matt and Vince team.
Amatomu is a very important site to the M&G, and to the wider blogging community. We’ve been struggling with sorting out bugs in the system that Vince would have killed in minutes, but unfortunately takes me hours as I get acquainted with the system. Once the system is stablised, we’ll look at spicing it up, getting the community going again and finding the mojo.
If you’ve hit one of the bugs in Amatomu, please mail me at jasonn at mg.co.za rather than Vince. And for all those who have mailed and to whom I haven’t yet replied, I am working on the issues and will contact you shortly.
Jason
esvl Aug 22
Strange. I visit the site all the time to check out the new posts people make.
Met some great bloggers through it the past view days.