One Ball, No Hype

No, this isn't a post defending the wit and wisdom of John Kruk. It's a quick note to my fellow Blogfricans, aka the folks who own and operate spots blogs... It appears that Ballhype, the site that launched a few years ago to give us all something more to obsess about in regards to site links and our overall middle-school girl like need to be popular, is no more. They got bought out two years ago and are displaying a Don't Come Back note today, so, um, well, that's that.

Marketing Pilgrim and Barn Burner Sports have four day old postings about this, mostly to cover the other sites that were affected, none of which ever looked like you've heard of them, either. So it's not like I'm delivering urgent news about an unrequited site. And I suppose it's all to the good, really, though the timing is sort of odd, what with Ballhype having gone through a site redesign in the past few weeks that pushed MMA stuff much higher in the mix. My guess is that the traffic just wasn't going in any good direction, that places like YardBarker (all hail the mighty YardBarker, fine patron of the FTT Lists and overall Good People) stole all of their thunder, and that the lords of Blogfrica somehow found other ways to learn which of their posts were getting links. Such as, well, checking your traffic logs. I run a relentlessly unpopular blog with minimal commentary that isn't about my level of overall suckitude, plus I've got the tech savvy of your average over-the-hill failed nerd, and even I knew enough to cover that.

Anyway, I suppose I need to go light a candle in the window for it, or at the very least, appreciate the fact that a site that listed this place as something like the 666th best in the world at what we do is no more. Proof, not that you needed it, that the vengeance of the Tool is a dish best served, um, well, not at all. Moving on.