What is MyBlogLog?

MyBlogLog provides a widget that you can place on your site. MyBlogLog users who then visit your site are automatically added to your "community" of visitors and you will usually see an image and/or text with the visitor's user name. Only the most recent visitors MyBlogLog members, will show within the MyBlogLog widget.

Below you will find screen shots of the widget in action from Jeremy Zawodny's blog:

This is an example of the MyBlogLog widget from one one Zawodny's pages.

A close of up example of what the widget looks like as it displays the icons of recent visitors to Zawodny's blog:

A picture of Zawodny's "community" of site visitors:

Initial Spam and Taking Steps to Stop MyBlogLog Spam

As I pointed out earlier, with MyBlogLog, your most recent visitors typically show up in your on page widget. Unfortunately this can create an exploitable flaw. Cornwallseo has written a bit about this and how one might create a spam blog or script to exploit this fact, and he points to an experiment by Soloseo and a few hacks that are cropping up. In Soloseo's experiment, he was able to create a dummy graphic/profile account and then get the profile to appear on a popular tech blog's MyBlogLog widget with very little effort expended.

While I'm sure there are more issues that could be found, MyBlogLog does at least appear to be proactive. They have taken recent  steps to improve their service now that Yahoo's acquisition has placed them into the spot light. One of these moves is a "request" system similar to how MySpace works to block unwanted friends, in order to combat random additions to your MyBlogLog community. In MyBlogLog terminology these potential additions to your site are called "My Admirers". I can tell you that it works as within moments of creating a new account with MyBlogLog, with out even providing a web page for my new "community", I had two admirers listed on my account management page... One named Richquick who may or may not be Cornwallseo or some one promoting his web design book and the other from Spicypage who may or may not be connected to a digg/alexa clone. Unfortunately if this automation continues, you could end up with hundreds of 'admirers' that you have no way to clear off your account management page. It wouldn't surprise me if you have more control over this in the future.

Below, a screen shot of my new MyBlogLog account with my obligatory first "friend", Eric, who helped found MyBlogLog and writes posts for their typepad blog. This MyBlogLog screen shot also displays my (automated?) potential friends/admirers Richquick and Spicypage.

Is MyBlogLog useful?

Is MyBlogLog useful? I think the answer to this question is really in the eye of the beholder. It depends greatly on your needs.

For some companies, deciding to embrace "community" or "social" aspects takes a lot of persuasion. I would say that although it still has some issues, MyBlogLog is a great way to ease into the social sphere. In some cases there are infrastructure concerns that make adding a forum nearly impossible. The challenge of adding a "captcha" system can also be daunting to some. MyBlogLog's widget is pretty simple to add to any page and it is simply a small bit of html and javascript code. So this provides a basic means of allowing site visitors to make comments and for you to get in touch with visitors with out a major site overhaul or technology investment.

Yahoo is also getting it's foot in the door of web analytics with MyBlogLog. The MyBlogLog widget also provides a very basic visitor stat package. In MyBlogLog's free and paid service, there are very few ways to slice/dice visitor data and, among other limitations, there is no way to export data into other formats like Excel. For the analytics industry, this is probably a good thing. Basic analytics services like these introduce bloggers and others to a few of the factors beyond raw hits. Eventually many sites grow beyond basic offerings with a need for more comprehensive and flexible solutions. This in turn leads them to solutions like those offered by the company that I work at, WebTrends.

Overall, Yahoo's MyBlogLog has the potential to become as popular as "del.icio.us", a social tagging site that Yahoo had acquired in December 2005. However at this time there are some very serious concerns and limitations that may not make this service right for every one. Only time will tell how successful this endeavor is, but this will certainly be an interesting site/service to watch.

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