In the last three years, I've been a loyal user of Blogger and resisted going to Wordpress or Tumblr where many fashion bloggers have found good homes. During the time I was on Blogger, The Recessionista was featured in the New York Times, The Huffington Post, Reuters, Life & Style Magazine, and on TV via NBC news and ABC news (both National & Local.) If I was working in PR at Blogger, I would hold that type of success up as case study reasons that bloggers can succeed using Blogspot/Blogger. And isn't that the dream of every blogger? To be read and find an audience. Unfortunately, the robots at Blogger who monitor the blogs don't read the press or watch the news. In their infinite wisdom (or lack thereof), they determined that The Recessionista might be spam and decided to take it down. Here's the note I got on my Blogger Dashboard after I tried unsuccessfully to restore the blog:
"Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive. We received your unlock request. On behalf of the robots, we apologize for locking your non-spam blog. Please be patient while we take a look at your blog and verify that it is not spam."
Nice huh? Those robots really have good manners and are very conscious of Intellectual Property rights. Not. Despite my emails and Twitter messages to individuals at Blogger, there has been no response. Oh, I did get a response via a Blogger help forum, from someone called "The Katney" that it could take up to 2 days to restore the blog, which is so very comforting, not to mention sympathetic.
So what's next for The Recessionista? I will get my content back if I have to engage legal counsel. Then the blog will move off of BlogSpot and find another home. If the folks at Blogger think that a blog that has won awards and has been featured in the worldwide press is spam, then why stay with them? Apparently, they don't want a successful, highly trafficked blog that generates revenue for Google via AdSense, or they just don't care to look beyond their robots. This is the second time Blogger robots have locked The Recessionista--the first time was after the Blog was in the New York Times. Nice way to help a blogger build audience right?
Maybe someone at Blogger will read this who is not a robot. That is my hope. Put this right, and I'll go on my way to another home, and your robots can have at it. Meantime, Bloggers reading this back-up your content ASAP and think about ways to protect your work. That's the morale of this story. The Blogger help forums are full of legitimate bloggers complaining about their blogs being locked. Meantime, many of the "splogs" (spam blogs) that take my posts from The Recessionista and paste them on their blogs are still up and running. Go figure.
