8/17/2014

Goodbye Yahoo Contributor Network; Hello, new world of internet writing

The Yahoo Contributor days are officially over. Profile pages now redirect to the main Yahoo search page as does the main url for Voices. Work created by what the company said was 600,000 writers has now been removed. What was there only a little while ago is now gone.

They warned us that the end of the Yahoo Contributor Network was coming. We had some time to get ready. Still, the deletion comes across like a kick in the gut. The loss is tangible.

I'm not talking about the loss of content from the internet airwaves but the loss of a home. For many writers, the Yahoo Contributor Network was a starter home in the world of content sites.

The company, and it's predecessor known as Associated Content, launched careers and spring boarded others. Without the platform some people might never have taken their first tentative steps into the writing world.

Now, in the click of a button, all of that is gone.

I heard it said once that endings are beginnings turned inside out. Even as we mourn the loss of the Yahoo Contributor Network, writers are already hard at work. New careers will emerge from the ashes. Writers are becoming editors. Bloggers are intensifying their efforts. Most (if not all) will sharpen our quills and fine tune our writing focus.

Here's to a new world of online writing! Keep following this and my other blog. The best, as they say, is yet to come.