Well, the once very popular widget banner exchange service BlogRush is shutting down. The company has this shocking announcement on their website and is asking bloggers to remove the widget code asap.

BlogRush didn’t grow without its fair share of problems — from security issues to abusive users trying to ‘game’ the system to much lower click-rates than expected. We also had some problems with trying to fairly control the quality of the network, and in the process made many mistakes in deciding what blogs should stay or go. All of these issues, ultimately, limited the service’s full potential.

Our team worked very hard to try and build a service that would truly help bloggers of all sizes get free traffic to their blogs. This was our primary focus. Not once did we ever try to monetize the service with ads or anything else. BlogRush never made a single penny in revenue. We wanted to be able to help our users FIRST and then worry about monetizing the service later. Unfortunately, the service didn’t work out like we had hoped. (It happens.)

BlogRush was a free blog traffic service founded by John Reese, and the idea was actually hatched at 4AM! It was a very popular service and many blogs joined by placing a widget on their blogs. These widgets featured links to articles by others who have also signed up for the service. You earn credits (which brings traffic to your blog) when people click on these links… and you get more credits (and thus more traffic) when you refer more people (who in turn refer others) to sign up and use Blogrush.

Anyway, BlogRush survived less than a year and experienced some criticism from the public. Some even called it a Ponzi scheme.

RIP, Blogrush.