Ever heard of ModBlog? No? Me neither, until today, that is.
Aron has been fishing around for a blogging solution for his family that would allow them to post photos, jot down quick entries, etc. Blogger/Hello integration is teh sux0r (1 photo at a time) and Flickr is limited to 10MB of pics uploaded per month, so both of those were out. He stumbled across ModBlog in his wanderings and pointed me to it as well.
After poking around the site a bit (and even signing up for my own ModBlog) I’m left scratching my head. How the heck are they intending to keep afloat? No ads. No discernable source of income. A promise to never change their ToS allowing for such things.
And, for the low-low-low price of only $0.00, you too can have unlimited photo upload space, your own private IRC-esque chat channel, private user-to-user mail, complete template and layout freedom, music playlist sharing, your own forums and just about anything else under the sun an aspiring blogger could want.
I just don’t get it. It seems too good to be true. The equipment and bandwidth costs to run such a business surely must run into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars annually. Can someone clue me in? Does someone on the development staff have a key to the U.S. Mint? Are they printing their own money?
Maybe it’s something more sinister. Maybe it’s run by Starbucks who will drive traffic into their stores by offering free wireless and fabulous speeds to ModBlog allowing grande latte-sipping Millenials the freedom to post their cynical views on life where the entire universe can see.
