"Who thought that a bunch of Asian kids in the southwest US could bootstrap a phenomenon and cause Xanga to get big?"
  - What Went Wrong

John, Bob, and crew - are just "a bunch of Asian kids".  ha.

"People thought Blogger was hot, until Xanga came from nowhere, and then Spaces blew past it in a few months. Today it's all about MySpace and YouTube."
  - What Went Wrong

But could it be 'all about' Xanga again?  Not likely unless Xanga radically innovates.

"People hang out at a physical place, because it's the place they expect to find the people they want to hang with. Same with social spaces. And when a particular hangout gets old, that's all there is to it. You can try your best to make your space "sticky", to reward loyalty, but the other space is working just as hard to make it easy for people to transfer. If you track hot restaurants or party spots in any city, you already know this. It's a terrible idea to think that a hot place will always be hot, that it's hot because of some specific strategy that you can own, or that you can sink even more money into it to make it hotter."
  - What Went Wrong

'notforprophet' used to be stickier.  Way stickier.   But so was 'fairestc' and 'Lyssa' (the first to popularly do 'TheTheologiansCafe' kind-of question thingie) and "VeryModern' and 'James', etc.  Never heard of them?  Or never hear much anymore?  That's because . . .

being popular on Xanga, as typified by making it to the top of Featured Content, is a predictably fickle and passing thing.  I'm about 99.99% confident that everybody  hitting consistently at one of the 'top 10' spots on Featured Content now  won't be there two years from now.  Even if they are still around.  Even if their content has gotten better.  It's the law of Blog Humble:  An online social network like Xanga absolutely requires ever-shifting faces in popularity.   Or it itself will die (sooner than later).  Queen for a Day.  Yep, all you FC brighties today ain't nothing more than Queens for a Day.  Step up, get popular, and shine, shine, shine.  Then prepare yourself, if you stick around, to return to the pack.