A Short Chronology of Xanga

 

10/1998        Xanga starts up in a form that would be barely identifiable today.
Jewel is the first initially identifiable user.

 

11/1999         Xanga Alpha (not public).

 

 05/2000        Beta Xanga (still not public)defines itself as a site for small online entrepreneurs to become affiliates (think: Amazon.com)and write/sharereviews.

 

10-2000         The Xanga testbed gets hotter, but still not public.

 

11/05/2000     First xanga post with a link in it. (...by John, Xanga CEO-type).

 

11/29/2000     The soon-to-be infamous ‘bianca’ (“Bianca Broussard”) is created and developed for PR purposes; there are several ‘bloggers’ about, but most, if not all, are apparently either 1) related to the Xanga enterprise by inside invitation or 2) fictional personalities created to shake out the testbed and to create a pre-public and fictitious sense of community.

 

12/18-19/2000 Xanga goes bigtime public as the first GeoCities members respond to a spam email recruitment from Bianca Broussard, a fictional PR personality of Xanga.

 

12/20/2000     ‘notforprophet’is born; he gets the strange intuition that not everyone in the neighborhood is for real.

 

 

12/26/2000     I identify the first real “face” behind the Xanga enterprise.

 

12/30/2000     I identify more real “faces” behind Xanga.

 

3/10/2001       Angelfire spam recruitment underway (Bianca returns after 1-2 month hiatus).

 

4/28/2001       Bianca is deactivated!

 

5/2001            Many structural changes to popularity and ranking metrics; Premium appears.

 

Winter 2002    “Xangalympics” marketed by Xanga, winner to get Lifetime membership, winning ‘Team’ to get other prizes.  Winners are never announced.

 

1/25/2002       James, the daily fix for a strong following of Xangans,  "leaves" Xanga (returns 2 weeks later).

 

7/2002            Xanga Store announced (never launches, now defunct).

                       Xanga Personals started.

 

7/29/2002       The Asian community on Xanga (now 95% of all bloggers) 

coalesces and ascends to the top of Featured Content.

 

12/20/2003      In relative obscurity, an unfinished chronology of Xanga gets devised.