Is Entrecard going the way of the Titanic?  The lack of activity in the Entrecard Forums sure makes it seem that way.  But is that the whole story?  How about taking a look at the actual dropping numbers.  Let’s go to the video tape!

Entrecard October vs November

Above is a chart of the activity of Entrecard users on my droplist who reciprocated drops for the previous two 30 day periods.  Since I always drop on these people without fail, this creates a good indicator of who drops on me regardless of whatever method each person uses. 

The stats:

October’s droplist had 250 members on it.  November’s total is 238.  Since members always come and go, a loss of 12 active members is hardly cause for alarm.  But let’s look more closely at the activity of those 238 droppers.  Those who dropped 11-30 cards a month greatly decreased.  Those that dropped 2-10 increased sharply, going from 44 people to a total of 64.  Those that dropped 0-1 were removed from my list, 12 in total.   That shift of 32 people out of 250 is significant.  Not only are members posting less often in the forums, they are dropping fewer cards.  Sure, blame it on the economy or election doldrums, but I don’t see it that way.

Conclusion:  Despite a downshift in activity and enthusiasm among Entrecard’s members, Entrecard is not finished as a network.  It still accomplishes it’s main goal of bringing like minded bloggers together.  As long as Entrecard delivers the traffic it won’t disappear.  There are enough members who don’t care about who runs it, how it is run, or even if it becomes 100% spam.  Eventually the last two mods will leave, spam will return, and the forums will be a ghost town.   But as long as the servers continue to function, the service will exist.

That’s a big “IF”:  Entrecard still has not properly monetized itself, and VC’s who once saw promise now see it as yesterdays news.  Venture Capital has not dried up, just dried up for Entrecard.  Eventually Graham Langdon may just sell it to break even, much like he did with the Million Dollar Wiki.  His insistence of “being around for the new owners” is actually a deal breaker given his current unpopularity among his own users.  Fixing the forums and adding a proper support network won’t bring back the old users.  The OIO ads currently funding Entrecard are losing interest among advertisers.  He’s down to 7 OIO advertisers now.  Is $350 from OIO plus the $10 he probably makes from AdSense a month enough to cover server costs?  Maybe. 

Could Graham or new ownership turn things around?  Short answer is “no”.  It would require a lot of ideas, coding, volunteer help, and a wealth of new/returning users.  Nobody I know that stopped dropping cards misses that aspect.  So how can Entrecard appeal to the casual user?  It can’t unless somebody major partners with it.  And by major, I mean Google, Yahoo, or WordPress.  It could save itself by allowing non-blogs to join, and then recruit the whole facebook/myspace crowd, but it may even be too late for that.

In other news: Read  information about Turnip’s Drop List, download the droplist itself, or sign up for the free CMF DIRECT beta.  That way if Entrecard ever disappears, people can still find your Entrecard image or blog.

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