Several months ago I got this email from someone at the Seed Media Group:
Thank you for your interest in being hosted by ScienceBlogs. In the last couple of months, we have received well over a hundred queries from bloggers representing an impressive breadth and depth of science
expertise. However, as we are trying to maintain a sense of community at ScienceBlogs, we are able to extend only a small number of invitations at a time. . . . In light of the very limited number of spaces we have to offer, we regret to inform you that we cannot extend you an invitation at this time.
This was sent to about 50 people. Their email addresses were visible. One of the recipients thought that we, the rejectees, could form our own umbrella website and wrote to us about this. I replied:
I love the idea of a form rejection letter leading to the founding of a competitive website — count me in!
Four months later I got an invitation to join the result, www.scientificblogging.com. It is now a well-functioning website with lots of interesting stuff.
Seth, I think you’re confusing us with this group: Indy Science Blogs. We tried last year to get them to come into our site instead but they prefer keeping their own individual banners and making a newsfeed link on that common URL.
It’s a shame too, because they have some great stuff over there and it would be good for everyone to get them more exposure.
Thanks for the publicity! We are just about to start a public beta and we’ll let everyone who likes to write about science have their own column and get paid to do it.
Oh, my. Even a renegade website didn’t want me.