If you are a member of myphilately.com and haven’t visited in a while you might not be aware that the website has been closed by its owner. The site and its databse were put up for sale but apparently no one was interested.
I used to visit often, reading people blogs and such, but I admit I did not participated enough (lack of time). I took part in a couple of round robin exchanges, wrote a post or two, uploaded a couple of stamp pictures. It was a nice site, a very interesting idea and from my perspective it was filling a gap: the “Social networking” aspect missing in the stamp collecting world. In this internet age, everything is about networking and I don’t think philately is an exception.
Why was it closed? Running a website takes a lot of time and can also be costly. I suspect the owner was getting too busy with this website. A blog requires maintenance and updates but a social sites requires almost 24/24 supervision: track and remove spam, updates, contact with the users, queries and so much more.
I just hope every member got time to save their articles and blog posts written on my philately. It’s sad to see your own work go down the drain. That’s why it is important to publish your main work on your own website. So you are not at the mercy of someone else if things turn bad.
