Regular readers have probably noticed a widget I placed on the sidebar called BlogRush, one that is supposed to show posts from websites like this one that are relevant to what I post about here. I put their widget on my site and send traffic out to other people running the widget, and in exchange, I get traffic from my headlines appearing on other peoples widgets.

It's a simple concept and one horribly bungled by a startup that has no clue what it's doing. My BlogRush "dashboard" where I can track how many impressions I've given the widget hasn't been functional in over a week. Their excuse is they are making a new, better dashboard, and somehow this means that the old one has to be turned off while the new one is being written. That is probably one of the most pathetic things I've ever seen in web development. You simply do not turn off the old interface/system while you make a new one.

Ever heard of parallel development guys?

Since I can't see how many impressions I've given this widget anymore, I can't complain with numbers in hand how totally useless it has been for this website. According to my logs, I've only gotten 3 hits from this widget since installing it, and none since the beginning of this month. Not only are 3 hits a month not worth cluttering my sidebar, even if it provided more hits, I'd probably dump it anyway because their service and ineptitude is simply that bad.

For a company and site that is all about syndicating blog posts across a faux network, they don't have a blog of their own to explain to people why their service sucks, their system wasn't ready for prime time when launched, how long it will be until the new dashboard is ready, why the old one had to be turned off, and generally talk to their users. There's no forum for discussion, either.

Bye bye BlogRush, call me when you grow up a little.

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