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The Xanga Empire

No, that’s a misnomer. It should be the WebCrimson Empire as hosted by Xanga severs.

John Hiler is co-founder of WebCrimson, a software consulting firm based in Manhattan. WebCrimson does website consulting implementing its microCMS for clients like VC firms, book authors, non-profits, musicians, etc. John also helped build Xanga.com, one of the largest weblog community sites.

That’s the blurb that John uses to introduce himself on www.microcontentnews.com which is described as “a CORANTE microblog” but which itself is hosted by the Xanga servers.

Now, www.microcontentnews.com is a very interesting site. I recommend it as cutting-edge reading on the blogging phenom and I truly value it’s marvelous links. But back to the Empire…

Yes, Xanga (the servers) is more than just us (the community). Did you know that www.webcrimson.com is also a Xanga server site? You probably do—if you remember back to 9/23/2001 when the XangaTeam proposed it as free trial.

But did you know that the *Crimson Hosting* (at www.crimsonhosting.com ), you know, the banners that adorn the top of so many non-Premium Xanga blogs, is Xanga, too?

We build websites

During the day, I work with a small group of friends as part of a small web design and consulting shop.

During the night - well to be honest, during a lot of the day, too - we spend our time building free blog apps (like bloglet.com), blog sites and webzines (like Microcontent News). We are all happily addicted to the world of weblogs.

--Marc

And have you ever heard of bloglet (at www.bloglet.com ) ? It’s an email notification system setup to work with Blogger and MovableType. Courtesy of monsur. Oh yes, and another resident in the house of Xanga!

Are these guys busy or what?!

Actually, Xanga servers claim IP addresses starting, according to my legal hacking scanner, at 208.215.143.2 and continuing until 208.215.143.30 .

Here’s the actual breakdown:

208.215.143.2 www.xanga.com
208.215.143.3 purchase xanga URL
208.215.143.4 Forbidden
208.215.143.5 Forbidden
208.215.143.6 xanga portal
208.215.143.7 cannot find server
208.215.143.8 cannot find server
208.215.143.9 cannot find server
208.215.143.10 www.webcrimson.com
208.215.143.11 www.webcrimson.com
208.215.143.12 “Nothing to see here”
208.215.143.13 xanga portal
208.215.143.14 www.crimsonhosting.com
208.215.143.15 cannot find server
208.215.143.16 cannot find server
208.215.143.17 www.microcontentnews.com
208.215.143.18 www.bloglet.com
208.215.143.19 xanga portal
208.215.143.20 cannot find server
208.215.143.21 xanga portal
208.215.143.22 xanga portal
208.215.143.23 xanga database
208.215.143.24 xanga portal
208.215.143.25 xanga portal
208.215.143.26 xanga portal
208.215.143.27 cannot find server
208.215.143.28 cannot find server
208.215.143.29 cannot find server
208.215.143.30 xanga database

There we have it: the Xangaweb as best as I could determine. Do Xanga Premium subscriptions’ money and donations go to support any of the other entities? We hope not. Do any of the other entities financially support Xanga? Selfishly, we hope so. In any case, good luck WebCrimson Empire, sailing on the Xanga boat.