We started the Salon Blogs program three-and-a-half years ago, in July, 2002. Salon’s business wasn’t exactly thriving at the time, but we knew that there was an explosion of energy and creativity happening in the universe of blogs, and we wanted to figure out a way for Salon to participate. We lacked the resources to build our own system, so we partnered with Userland Software, which provided the software for users and took on the work of running the back end for us.

In charging a modest fee for our product, we were rowing upstream, since free alternatives were already available and would only grow more plentiful. Nonetheless, we were delighted and proud to see a smart little community grow under the Salon Blogs banner. Writers flourished; projects emerged; more than one book contract was obtained.

Still, 2006 is a whole different universe from 2002. Salon — today, thankfully, on a firmer financial footing — is beginning to explore some new ideas and approaches to the realm that business types call “user-generated content” (or, sometimes, “social software”), visionaries call “citizen’s media,” and old-timers like me still think of as “interactivity.”

I have the good fortune, and the challenge, of leading this exploration for Salon: this is the main focus of my work here, for now. As a lot of you know, I served as managing editor from 1999 until late 2004, when I took a leave of absence to write my book. It was the best job I’ve ever had — but five years is a long time to be managing anything, particularly during the roller-coaster ride of those particular years. Since last fall, Salon has been fortunate to have Jeanne Carstensen in the managing editor’s seat — and I get to go build some new things, which has always been my favorite role.

Since, among other possibilities, our new projects may involve a new approach to blogs, we’ve decided to stop taking new sign-ups for the existing Salon Blogs program. It doesn’t make sense to keep inviting people in that door. One big issue is that the Radio Userland software that the program is built around — and that I’m still using for this blog — turned out not to be the ideal tool for this sort of project. It installs easily, but long-term maintenance can be hard, since the program and all its data sits on your own hard drive. (This post by Paolo Valdemarin explores the topic further.) Radio had some very cool features ahead of its time, including a great built-in RSS-feed reader; but for many users those don’t outweigh the essential awkwardness of hosting all your blog data on your desktop machine. That model, whatever its strengths and weaknesses, is one that the world has moved away from, and Userland is putting more muscle behind developing other products.

Current Salon bloggers should not be alarmed (though I know some will be anyway). Your blogs will continue to live at the same Web address they’ve always had. You don’t have to do anything or change anything if you don’t want to. Userland has assured us that they’ll continue to run the blogs.salon.com server for you. The updates and ranking pages will remain in place, too.

You can keep blogging as you always have — we’re not shutting anything down. I imagine some current users will decide to look at alternatives; for those who decide they want to move their blogs, we and Userland will do what we can to help you with the transition. Or you may want to wait and see what Salon has to offer as this year progresses.

While we don’t yet know exactly what it will be — that’s part of the fun — if it attracts the sort of creative spirit that Salon Blogs has, we’ll know we’re on the right track.

(For those of you interested in the discussion about these new Salon projects, there’s a letter to readers up on the site now, and also a discussion in Table Talk — world-readable, but only Salon Premium subscribers can post.)