NowPublic "Your DNS has expired."

by liamssoft | January 18, 2013 at 09:44 am

733 views | 12 Recommendations | 0 comments

For the last 2 days, Thursday 17th and Friday 18th January 2013, members and visitors alike have been greeted by "DNS service for this domain has expired with DNS Made Easy" when trying to connect to www.nowpublic.com. The site suddenly came back online 3 hours ago but is intermittently showing the "Your DNS has expired." when trying to connect.

Looking at a Summary of statistics for nowpublic.com on the WebStatsDomain site we can see that nowpublic has dramatically fallen in value to a meager net Worth of $105,251 USD.

Considering the site was reportedly sold for $25m in September 2009 to Clarity Media a Philip Auschutz company operating under The Examiner brand name, it is very surprising the value has fallen by $24.89m so quickly.

More stats here from Alexa and past stats here show the rise and falls, peaks and troughs since Nowpublic was created, and interestingly December 2011 was the busiest time and September 2012 the quietest when most of their full-time team was laid off.

I know from the many messages I have received from nowpublic members, complaining about the removal of the comments section on October 5th, 2012, and the difficulty with uploading photos, and showing one month old news on the front page until you sign in, have all contributed to members leaving and the fall in viewers and participators to the site. If you are not a member you are greeted by a front page that is weeks out of date.

It's almost like nowpublic is trying to save money by not maintaining the website but in doing so it has lost them $24 million in monetary value and many millions of readers. Probably more importantly, the nowpublic terms and conditions throw no light on the current situation.

The only explanation that I can think of is that the site is being closed down.

Three of our most respected members have their own views as to why nowpublic has become a shadow of it's former self. Scrivener's story LOCKHEED/USG CYBER-CENSORS 'BLACK HOLE' JOURNO FROM NOWPUBLIC.COM makes for interesting reading.

In PeaceFrog's story Online COINTELPRO: Nullifying Bloggers we see another very plausible explanation as to what is going on at nowpublic.

And in tikun's story NowPublic Has Ended its Relevancy extreme and radical conspiracy blogs are blamed for the destruction of this once relevant site.

As NowPublic have disabled comments for members as of 5th October 2012, please send me a message with your comments and I will update the post accordingly .. Liam

Latest Comments:

21st January 2013

I don't hold much truth in conspiracy theories but having been a contributor to NowPublic for years I find it so disconcerting that there is no rhyme or reason for this present deterioration of the site. I find this kind of behavior by the owners to be weird and bizarre. Maybe we should hold a week long boycott and with hold all contributions and see what happens. Boycott the site..

tikun

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

18th January 2013

I don't think it's fair to the Nowpublic contributors and/or the readers to just not give any explanation as to what is happening.

langoliers

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

18th January 2013

NowPublic was built on the "crowd powered media" model. Reader comments, and, the social media sharing that is generated through reader comment's was essential to NowPublic's success.

I do not believe that NowPublic voluntarily abandoned user comments. The page view stats have been in steep decline as a result of the comment ban, and so explains the plummet in the site's worth. I believe that, most likely, NowPublic received a National Security Letter "NSL" to reveal commentators IP addresses.

This was done for psychological warfare/ extreme coercion purposes, since the FBI can get this information without resorting to an NSL. The hundreds of thousands of NSL's that have been issued over the years seek "access" to information the government already has access to. They are designed to threaten and intimidate into compliance, and hamper free speech.

There is also a chance that the government bought this site in an unrecorded backdoor deal. In any event, the "problems" at NP are evidence, as far as I can see, of some of its articles getting to close to the truth.

End of comments

========================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================

More from NowPublic

Webmaster required to maintain NowPublic web site by liamssoft | December 25, 2012

Back in the good old days NP had a steady stream of mechanics ready to fix the bugs....

Activists warned to watch what they say online by liamssoft | October 1, 2012

Social media monitoring becomes the 'next big thing in law enforcement'. John Cooper QC said, police are monitoring key activists online and that officers and the courts are becoming increasingly savvy when it comes to social media websites.

Who is Phillip Anschutz? | Forum Topic | NowPublicwww.nowpublic.com › Forum home › Forum Archive by CJist | November 5th, 2009

– As readers and writers at NowPublic know, gazillionaire Philip Anschutz owns NowPublic citizen journalism site. That's news! But who is he? There are oodles of threads that link this oil and gas tycoon to deep policy and financial involvement with Christian conservatives, the Republican party, Geroge W.....

Nowpublic Writers: Meet Your New Boss. by djermano | October 30, 2009

By: The Rev. Yes Nowpublic made the announcement they soldout to The Examiner..but its for darn sure they did not tell you details about the New Boss.. Meet Billionare Philip Anschutz....

Billionaire Republican Campaign Donor Buys "Now Public" Site by francislholland | September 1, 2009

Subsequently posted at the Francis L. Holland Blog. Phillip Anschutz, the new owner of Now Public, has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republicans and Republican causes, including $3,000 to Senator John McCain and the Colorado Republican Party, according to the...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------