Users of the country’s largest online blog service provider, Wretch, protested yesterday after the company ended several services — including backup for articles — on Tuesday.
“Most blog providers keep backups of their members’ articles on hard disk so you can retrieve your articles if articles on your blog are hacked or other system problems occur,” Taiwan Bloggers Association chairman Billy Pan (潘建志) told a news conference yesterday. “But Wretch — the No. 1 blog provider in the country, with more than 3 million members — suspended the backup service yesterday [Tuesday], which means that if by chance you lose your blog articles, they’re gone forever.”
Along with the backup service, a function allowing users to hold online polls, create personalized front pages and upload pictures from cellphones were also terminated.
“It doesn’t make any sense that Wretch won’t even keep backups for VIP members who pay thousands of NT dollars for membership,” Pan said.
Annual membership fees for Wretch range from NT$1,000 to NT$4,000 depending on a user’s service level.
Backed by Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City Councilor Chien Yu-yen (簡余晏), more than 400 Wretch members jointly filed a complaint to Taipei City’s Consumer Protection Officer, Chen Po-ching (陳柏菁), who has launched a probe into the case.
“We will also submit a petition to the Fair Trade Commission because we think Wretch is trying to maintain its market share in an inappropriate manner,” Chien said.
In a statement last month announcing the suspension of the services, Wretch said: “As we strive to provide more new services, we need to put resources to more efficient use so that our engineers and product development specialists can focus on products that everyone wants.”
Many Wretch users threatened to take their blogs elsewhere.
“You’re adding restrictions here and suspending functions there — what do we still have?” a member asked.
“You should have at least discussed this with members before making a decision. We’re really not happy about this and will just move [to other servers],” another user said.
Others cast doubt on Wretch’s claim that the functions were scrapped to “put resources to more efficient use.”
“I think it’s a trick to maintain market share,” said Bryant Lin (林柏男), a lawyer who blogs on Wretch. “As long as there’s a backup, you can easily pack up and move to another provider. But if you have to move your articles and pictures one by one, you would rather just stay with Wretch.”
Wretch was one of the earliest blog providers to offer a Chinese interface in Taiwan, but it now faces competition from Roodo, Pixnet, Blogspot and other blogging sites.
Giddens, a blogger whose online writings have attracted a large readership and who has published several short novels that he first posted on his Wretch blog, said he was upset about the news.
“I never thought about keeping backups [on my computer] because I thought having them on Wretch was good enough,” he said. “Now I’m so upset I want to move to another provider, but I’m stuck because I don’t have any backups of my works.”
Giddens has more than 1,000 articles on his blog.
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