Can't say that I didn't see this coming over time.

I advise everyone to STOP USING freehosts as their main sources of income. Buy some domains, build sites and pay for shared hosting. It's like $10 a month.

Plus, you need to look at free hosts as temporary income only. When you own the site you can sell it and cash in at the end of the day. You can't sell someone elses site so to speak.

This is why I always save my posts so that I can post them else where if necessary in future time.

Moral to story, build your own.

I did notice over a 3 year span that the traffic to the twan blogs too a serious nose dive from an organic point. I did have one that had about 250k organic visitors over 3 years. That was great. But its temporary.

I hope mikesinner finally started using his own hosting...otherwise he'll be screwed if for some reason twan's shit doesn't come back up.

You're totally right though, free hosted blogs can be a great addition to your network/income BUT it should never be your entire network or the focal point of your business.

The only reason I hope his stuff comes back online is because whenever I created a new blog I would always add them to his directories so my blogs were indexed quickly and gained a little boost of early traffic.

I agree 100% Anexsia. I would do the same. However, the sites that are ranking high don't seem to have any backlinks to his. There have to be other ways to get free backlinks to your sites.

If anyone cares to share other methods please do tell.

It's best to never rely on a freehost though. If I made $100 the first month I'd buy a domain, shared account and set up things if I were others.

FHB $$$ is all gravy. Until the bowl is empty....

I remember one time when the network went down for 4 days. I'm not that worried yet. I have everything backed up on hard drives but reblogging all that would be a huge pain in the ass.

I would think he would sell it off before that but a lot of things Twan does don't make sense to me.

Hard to believe he just shut everything down like that.

Ouch at the dudes that lost thousands of blog.

Fuck, that must hurt. I know some guys had hundreds of keywords in google top 10.

Wow, you must be very angry and pissed. It looks like the service went away for good.

But if it manages to come back, it will be hard to recover I guess.

By the comments, It looks like the guy (Twan) was just looking to leave the business since long ago for some reason we don't really know, besides the decadence of the overall business model, it looks like there was another reason that finally made he take the decision to press the button.

You have to wonder if something has happened to Twan - To just shut and not even put a redirect on the site is crazy - He might have won the lottery I suppose....

castles in the air

or is it in the sand... https://youtube.com/watch?v=jW5zPy73gWk

Maybe he is rich and doesn't care about the money. Wouldn't be the first one here I imagine. :upsidedow

So this is bye-bye for good!

fuck free hosts, I don't give a shit, but those directories bring some PR juice, a lot of sites can be affected.

Free or not, i made some good $$$ in last 5 years or so!

Perhaps it will come back as it has before, but it would not be too much of a surprise if it didn't. I mean look at some of the other great products he has had out there:

RSS2Anywhere: Worked, but after not working correctly for several years.
Gallery2Blog: Dead
PicRush: Dead
Myfeedlist: Dead
AdultForumHost: Dead
the adult blog link trade site: Dead

All great products that hit a snag and consequently died.

Like Colmike, I made several inquiries to Twan about buying Myfeedlist but never got a response.

As i see it all the links regarding thumb sites, forums, dumplists are gone, so this is could be very well the end.

I have all backed up too, but as you say, huge pain in the ass not to mention the ero-advertising ads and have to resubmit the new urls all over again. Does anybody has a way to contact Twan to know once and for all if this is really the end?

Wonder if can mirror it.

so is this site dead?

The only intelligent thing said so far.

A gmail address that seems consistently used with his sites is on the whois info for them. I fired off an email to it last night but haven't heard anything back (shocker).

Yeah I wouldn't write it off until about a week. I think it will come back. But maybe after this he will finally sell it off or hire a manager?

Hi Guys,

my first post here, to a very said topic.. Hope all the TB users are not struggling too hard!

Im also wondering why not one single person had private contact to Twan.

I found the website Twansoft, sorry cant post link (under 30 posts) where you can find another mailadress. Twansoft´s Who Is shows a dutch adress.

And in a forum I found a post where someone posted his private home adress / who is data from 2004.

If we could save TB and the freehosters, maybe we should have a visit :upsidedow

But dont get me wrong, I dont want to chase him :rasta

Nice weekend to all

my SELF HOSTED 300+ blog network is already experiencing a huge boost in traffic and serps. thanks twan!

I'm pretty sure he moved since then. I remember a post about him talking about a new home he bought.

Still out... :(

Normally I would say wait 5 days or so but the biggest outage lasted for 3-5 days and was only two of the blogs I believe. This is the entire network consisting of at least 20 domains.

And it is effecting every domain he had. So it is a server problem and he must have had most, if not all, on the same server.

Exactly, the first address I saw was from 2004. It must be the old one, because the Twansoft-who is gives a new address near Groningen in the north part of Holland.

Same counts for his project "Tding". In dutch company directories you can find entries with his name, company registration number and exactly this new and 2nd private address near Groningen/Friesland. In the main/official dutch registration directory as well.

Furthermore, Twansoft runs also under his company name Tding and Thumblogger is registered with a PO Box around the corner, in another City in the state Friesland.

So, it must be up to date. Its a nice quiet place to live, but he removed his house from street view :)

Im sure he is there... We actually could try the phonenumbers at first :)

yeah yeah ..see sig??:pimp

Even his mainstream sites are down. There must be a huge problem and I even think TWAN is not aware of this situation...

Twan has mainstream sites?

Hi Guys,

just tried to reach him by phone under the dutch landline number you can find in his who is´ and other dutch directories which confirm his address, company registration etc.

And i reached a Twan, haha. Yes, im Twan K. He was not willing to talk, just said "No" on the question if he is the owner of thumblogger :)

An immediate No, in a normal way, then he hang up....

Damn, so he is fully aware everything is down.

That's crazy.

What must've happened to him to let it all go like this?

I guess we'll know if the site will be back within 24 hours. If he wasn't aware before, he's aware now.

sorry man kaktusan is the next choice

pornblog space and his other domains

I would think he has multiple servers, especially if he hasn't upgraded to newer hardware over the last few years. Multiple servers going down would usually mean nonpayment.

Are his sites all still down? Gonna be a pain in the ass going thru all my blogs deleting all the links to his directories :(

I've often wondered if he made money, I mean he hardly plastered adverts around did he, just that tiny text link to AFF at the top of each blog.

There are clearly tons of reasons why this network is down, but as just another stab in the dark, maybe people were uploading questionable content, and he didn't have the time to police free blogs 24/7.

Just another possibility...

:thumbsup:thumbsup

He made money. No doubt about that. Likely $$,$$$ monthly.

If he doesn't act fast directories will be deindexed soon.

His Free Hosts will be deindexed as well. With that our subdomains go as well.

This is likely gone for good.

Thankfully I don't just rely on freehosts anymore. Why rely on someone else when you don't have to do so...

hahahaha i love this....

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Where did you get those .edu and .gov backlinks? Or were those from your users? :batman

:pimp:pimp

This is why I stay away from free hosts.

This is also a reason not to keep all of your eggs in one basket.


Really sucks for anyone who lost pr or seo benefits due to this.

looks like his hosting is down... he probably didn't paid his hosting bill...

This sucks