Back in September of last year, our Sean P. Aune reviewed BlogRush, a service that promised those who signed up a “RUSH of TRAFFIC to their BLOG.” As of today, the promise to deliver on that traffic has been abandoned, according to the message left on the company’s front page by founder John Reese. Amongst the reasons for the demise cited: security issues, abusive users, and quality control.

Typically, I take no joy in the demise of a startup, but this is one startup that has been universally panned from very early on, and not just by me but by just about everyone that’s attempted to use the system.

When Sean first reviewed the service, he expressed his doubts as to the longevity of the service:

But while we try to be open minded about new sites, the BlogRush idea does hark back to “Web 1.0″ traffic exchanges. In these systems, you would earn exposure for your site by browsing other sites. However, these services eventually flamed out when they failed to deliver on their promises. Our take: don’t get your hopes up, because this one may not last forever.

When Pete took his look at the service a few days later, he predicted that some of the problems with the system could lead to it’s downfall, including that the system looked like it could be very easily abused (one of the reasons cited by Reese for the systems failure.

A year ago (in October of 2007), I took another look at BlogRush as they tried to clean up the already failing system by dumping 10,000 bloggers they believed to be simply gaming the system. It became very clear from the public outcry that many legitimate bloggers were getting canned along with the supposed spammers.

Exactly one year ago (October 30th of last year), BlogRush debuted their “Phase 2″ program, which boasted desparately needed increased click-through rates. Unfortunately, the click through rates were still far below what anyone would consider useful (their best click-through ratios were still in the range of .07% - .17%).

In several other unrelated discussions I’ve had with John here at Mashable, as well as in the farewell message on the BlogRush site, he claims that the idea was a result of an ill-thought-through plan concocted at four in the morning. In his farewell, he says:

I hope the failure of this service doesn’t in any way discourage other entrepreneurs from coming up with crazy ideas at 4AM (like I did with this one) and from “going for it” to just try and see if something will work. Without trying there can be no success. And as we all know, ideas are worthless without action. The Web wouldn’t be what it is today without entrepreneurs trying all sorts of crazy ideas.

As with most things John says, I’m going to have to slightly disagree. Definitely there is something to be said for “going for it.” It’s an essential part of anyone’s personality that separates them from those who just talk about stuff. The lesson to be learned here is that an idea that sounds good at four in the morning probably won’t sound as good the next day. In stead of just acting on impulse, and funding a company, it might be better to run the scheme past a couple of other folks to see if it’s doable.

I promise that if John had asked enough people, someone would have eventually told him about the traffic exchanges in the 90s, and the inherent flaws with them, or at least explained to him what a Ponzi scheme was and how they worked.