Local blogging platform closes down

The Mail&Guardian (M&G) today announced that its free blogging platform, Amagama, was to be closed down. The company, which hosts a number of successful online properties including blog aggregator Amatomu, said that the decision to close Amagama was taken after “much consideration and consultation”.

M&G technical manager Jason Norwood-Young said in an email to Amagama users today that the blogging platform had “very few active users, and we did not believe that it would be worthwhile trying to save it from its technical problems”.

One of the biggest challenges facing Amagama, said Norwood-Young, were spam blogs. “These spam blogs … created thousands of accounts and put too much pressure on the system to keep it running efficiently (and sometimes impossible to keep it running at all). As a result, Amagama suffered from poor performance over its lifespan, which made it unattractive to users.”

Norwood-Young said that he was “truly sorry that we have had to take this difficult decision. Amagama had a long history in the South African blogasphere, and this closure marks the end of that history”.

M&G Amagama closing down – give your views