Unexpected shut down, no warning at all
That's totally an understatement, by the way. Sigh. This is horrid. It's bad enough that the site was shut down, but what makes it worse is how there was no warning at all about this. I mean, don't you think that the least that they could have done was to at least tell us about this? Don't you think that they could have at least told us that the site will shut down soon so that we can get the chance to take down all of our articles from Bubblews and move them elsewhere?Unfortunately, they said nothing at all. They just shut down the site, and, now, nothing except the homepage, is accessible. It doesn't matter if you have a link to your profile page or one of your article pages. If you try to go to those URLs, you'll be greeted with an error 404 page. The homepage itself has nothing except a note about the site's shutdown.
What can be quite vexing is how this came as such a surprise, at least for me. I haven't been very active in Bubblews lately due to the low traffic and low earnings. But, occasionally, sometimes, I would still log on to the site to check things out, see how things are going, maybe even post something if I feel like it. These past few days though, I've been really busy, so I haven't been to the site at all. As such, I wouldn't even have known about the shut down if I hadn't come across an article talking about it.
No chance to backup articles?
I wish they could have said something, you know, like maybe have the courtesy to send all the members an email message about their plans for the site. It's not like they have to write a detailed email. They could just say something like, 'hey, the site is gonna shut down in so-and-so time, so why don't you go make backup copies of all of your posts if you wanna move them somewhere or something?'I'm really thankful that I've already moved a lot of my articles that I really like. However, I do still have a lot of stuff posted on there. And I would have liked to be able to move them. Sigh. I think, I hope, that I do still have copies of all of those posts somewhere. At least I'm pretty sure that a number of the posts I had on there were all about Bubblews anyway, so it's not like they can be reposted with the site's demise.
I hope the others also had backup copies of their articles. For those that don't, hopefully, Google still has a cache of your articles. Know any other means of being able to recover these posts?
What about the money?
Another thing that's really quite frustrating and annoying (not to mention plain depressing) about all this is the money. How many were so near to the $50 payment threshold? I had about $44+ in my Bubblews bank page, and, someday, I had hoped that I'd still be able to reach the payment threshold or that it would be lowered and that I'd be able to redeem that money.Now, it's impossible to do that. It's just a dream now, nothing but a shattered dream or would it be better to say a horrifying nightmare? Sigh. Do you really think that there's nothing that can be done about this now? Does that mean that there's no way for any of us to recover whatever money we had on that site? So, the site just gets to pocket everything then? What do you think about all this?
Now I feel kind of worried about the other writing sites out there. I just hope that, in case a site decides to shut down or something, they can at least give us an advance notice or warning so we can get backup copies of all of our articles.
Here are some of the comments from this article, back when it used to be posted elsewhere:
norlaw wrote on November 17, 2015, 9:06 AM:
Very good article. I have copies of my 3000 plus articles. Do you know if I will be able to submit them somewhere else? Bubblews owed me a lot of money, so I had not done much posting but checked the site to comment on others articles. Is the site a good one? Can you make any money at it. I usually write because I enjoy it but now I need the extra money.
morilla replied to norlaw on November 17, 2015, 9:12 AM:
You retain the rights to your articles; all you gave Bubblews was the right of use. However, bear in mind that other sites can put provisions on your use of articles which have been previously published.
They can stipulate or expect a certain percentage of editing; acknowledgment that it has been previously published with a notation as to what name it was published under and/or proof that (assuming you used a different name) that it was, in fact, you; etc. Likewise, when dealing with a membership site, there will inevitably be some members who 'frown' on publishing the 'same' article on multiple sites.
FreyaYuki replied to norlaw on January 10, 2016, 3:36 AM:
Thanks. Yes, you can republish your articles from Bubblews elsewhere since the site is already gone. But you should not post the same article on multiple sites since sites usually don't allow this. So, for example, if you post one of your Bubblews articles here on Persona Paper, then you won't be able to post it elsewhere unless you delete the post from this site first.
As for the money- this depends on a lot of factors like which site you join, how many visitors you get to your article, how much the site is offering to pay or like if they pay per view or by impressions, etc.
morilla wrote on November 17, 2015, 9:08 AM:
A business is not required to publicly announce what it is going to do in that regard. Remember, it's their business and you are simply a 'supplier' for it. With that said, there has been plenty of 'warning' and many members, especially in this site, have posted about that since at least the end of December last year. In other words, it wasn't a question of "if," but "when." Insofar as 'backing up articles,' that's something which people should of been doing as they posted . The same applies to contributions here and any other website.
The money is a potential point. However, given how they wrote off large amounts of member earnings at the end of December, given how people have been waiting 4 - 6 months for redemptions they still hadn't received, given other behaviors the site engaged in, and given that, if you read the Terms of Service, 'earnings' were not considered 'earned' until officially vetted and acknowledged, the case would be a tough one to make. There's also the fact that the cost of filing a legal action is more than what would be deemed to be owed to any, single member. I'm sure that's something they count on as they changed the Terms of Service to preclude "group" lawsuits.
carebear4u wrote on November 17, 2015, 9:11 AM:
Don't feel bad. I had $47 something. I even emailed them complaining. They will be missed for sure though. I am here and in TSU now.
bethieannie wrote on November 17, 2015, 10:03 AM:
If you google "Bubblews username keyword" you can find your posts. Then select to see the cache version. Until it gets reindexed, it will still show the post.
mtgywriter wrote on November 21, 2015, 9:12 PM:
I only heard about the demise of Bubblews because of a post in a writer group. Fortunately, I pulled all my posts around a year ago and never looked back. They're all still saved as Word documents on my desktop hard drive. Between now and the end of the year may be a good time to dust them off, make sure none were stolen and posted elsewhere, and see how they do now.
*Notes:
- Image is by GraphBerry (CC:BY-SA) from deviantArt
- This was previously published elsewhere
