I remember when Corank started - they got write-ups everywhere. i was thrilled too. Went and started a little site on Corank immediately.

It gets some 300 visitors a day now after almost an year. I haven’t tried to market it, too lazy.

But what the hell is going on with Corank itself? Nothing much seem to be happening. The Corank blog where the founder talks to you is updated rarely.

The old Corank site is now available here and practically kept out of your sight. These guys started ages before Mixx and could have easily done what Mixx is doing now. Look at Mixx Communities, that is what the current Corank is all about. However the way stories are promoted vs shared / featured is where they diverge. I never thought social news was about sharing. It is about collaboratively driving stories you like UP like in Digg. The Corank way had that dreary feel about it, at least for me. The pages do not pass pagerank either - stories open in an iframe. Sure, you can say a lot about why your site is not for SEOs, but marketers (the good ones) can be incredibly handy to make a site go viral. Did not happen here. Sad. (Correction: The links on the Corank Featured stories pass PR though)

Then there are the non-existent improvements. Nothing has changed in months now. I recently sent a support request, there was no reply.

The Corank interface was much cleaner than the alternative Pligg. And much faster too. Sad that this happened to it.

I tried to find a way in the admin interface to block a spammer. Nothing. There seems to be no easy way to ban a spammer. I have to sit around and delete his submissions one by one. Super. And I am still not sure about if the feature exists. It just is not in any place where someone who spent 12 years on the Net can find it.

Does anyone remember Corank anymore? I don’t think so. Time to write the epitaph? Well, I sure hope not. I hope I get back the entire data that my site contains if that happens.