There's a lot of similarities between blogging and TV.  Ever think of your life as a sitcom?  Or compare things that happen in your life to a tv show?   Xanga TV makes it easy to cross that divide.

Before, streaming on the internet was costly and hard to do, but thanks to the video team - they figured out a way for some users to stream.  We've also built a nice themes system that allows Xanga TV to be supported as well.

We're easing into this feature, so we're only opening this up to our premium users first.  So if you have premium, definitely check it out and let us know what you think - And if you got a cool show going on, drop us a line - would love to see ya on TV!

Today we're officially launching the Webcam Video Recorder!


We've been noticing more and more vloggers on Xanga and also noticed the long process someone has to go through to upload a video from your webcam to Xanga.  There's gotta be an easier way! So Michael included these features for a better vlogging experience:

So if you have a webcam, check it out!  Try recording a video and let us know what you think - In fact, record a video and let us know there!

Due to popular demand, we're bringing Lifetime Premium back!

It's been over 18 months since we stopped offering Lifetime Premium.  Yet, we still get emails from people asking for it!  One email stuck out in my head the most, when a user didn't ask for the Lifetime Premium plan, but instead asked - "can I have Xanga for life?" 

We thought it was just another premium plan - but rather, It's a commitment, it's a full pledge.  It's Xanga for Life.  The great part of it is, you don't have to get Lifetime Premium to grasp this, but for those that do, I think there's something needed to stand apart. 

These people helped Xanga be what it is today.  So, for all lifetimers you'll now have the Xanga for Life badge to honor your committment.  This will display on your Basic Info module on your site. 

And if you don't want to show this on your site, you have the option to hide this as well (http://edit.xanga.com/editpremium.aspx). 

Furthermore, for a limited time only, we're bringing the lifetime option back for people who want Xanga for Life. 

This will give anyone a chance to get this limited time offer and enjoy themes, photos, videos, and all the new slick features to come out in the future as well - and be a part of Xanga for life. 

We've been working on ways to find good content on Xanga for a while now.

Boost was good at finding pretty good content, but not so good with the multiple step nomination process. 
Stars are good cause it's really easy to vote (already 250,000 votes!), but it's also easy to game and give 'fake' stars. 

Then we thought, wouldn't it be cool if we could take boost's ability to find good content and combine it with the ease of voting in Stars?

Starting now, if enough people give a lot of stars to a weblog, photo, or video, it will be automatically submitted to  http://star.xanga.com.  There the academy of xanga users (aka you!) can provide checks and balances by voting on what's best.  This should make it pretty hard to game Stars.  If the academy of xanga users agrees that the post is really good, it must really be something - so we'll give it a rare "Star Award"!  

We also built in a system where if people try to game it by giving out fake stars or not honestly voting, the academy will fix it and the person's star power will go down.  We hope this system will be easy to vote and show the best content on Xanga.

Please check it out and tell us what you think!

 Every site now has the option to allow anonymous comments!  Now you have a choice:

So how about spam?  Vikas also added some cool preventive measures to help stop annoying spam.  Before leaving an anonymous comment, it asks for a word code just to make sure a script isn't being used to automate unwanted spam.

So check it out!  Tell your friends who haven't got around to making a Xanga yet, to leave you a comment and say hello - anonymous comments are here!