As many of you probably know by now, Enfuse Magazine is no more. It was an incredible honor for me to have had so much success with Enfuse and to have worked with so may talented people. People still ask why we shut down Enfuse. Here’s the letter I sent to all subscribers of our newsletter:
We have had a good run. The community we built over the last eight years has been a powerful one. Artists emerged from across the world to use the tools we put in place and created the energy that has made for an incredible experience. We have published some great work and I am amazed when I look at all the talent that has congregated here.
The web and the publishing industry have changed dramatically these eight years and we have been a part of that change. I like to think that our approach at providing an emergent user-driven publication was innovative when we began. We predated the social network sites that have become the standard. We provided tools for self-promotion that were not as ubiquitous as they have become and people responded. It has been a thrill and a pleasure to have been a part of.
Things are different today. It no longer makes sense to ask users to maintain yet another profile in some other corner of the web. We set out to bring great art Online. We grew into a community. But we never really ran a business. As we’ve scaled we’ve had to grow to accommodate. Costs have risen and time has grown short. But it has always only been a passion, never an enterprise. Without constant nurturing and contact, passions wane. It is time to break up.
At this point, in order to really serve the people who have helped to build this thing, we need to change everything. Enfuse must move on. Otherwise, the site itself will not elevate the work published within it. We are beyond the point where a few tweaks and feature enhancements are enough. The model has changed. The web has changed. I have changed. The tools that artists need are different now.
It no longer makes sense to perpetuate this mode.
We may emerge in a new form. We may disperse into the flux having been a blip in a stream at a time when our resonance made ripples. To all the incredible people that have been a part of this blip, Thank You!
We will leave the site Online until the middle of August. Then we will begin to dismantle. So, take a last look. Pass through looking for Matter Out of Place. Collect your stuff. Soon, we will be gone.
If anyone has interest in attempting to do something different with the existing infrastructure, please feel free to contact me. We have built some great tools and I am happy to share them or to pass the reigns of management to others who may want to give it a go. Perhaps you are in a different place than I am in your present life. Much is still possible.
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