The Rise and Fall of MyBlogLog
A few months ago, many high profile bloggers in the SEO community started using the MyBlogLog Widget on their pages. This included people such as ShoeMoney, Andy Beal, and GrayWolf. People were excited about building their communities and the opportunity to network with other blogger. I also joined up in December and placed the widget on my blog.
Soon, however reports of MyBlogLog spamming started rolling in. People were adding links to their networks via automated scripts, people came up with automated ways of getting their pictures at the top of high profiles blogs. People discovered how to automatically add others as co-authors on their blogs.
One of the highest profile bloggers talking about these issues was ShoeMoney. He was pointing out flaws and also pointed out a way people could surf the web pretending to be any member of MyBlogLog they wanted. This action got him banned from MyBlogLog. This caused many other bloggers, including Andy Beal and GrayWolf to boycott MyBlogLog.
The ban was a surprising move by the MyBlogLog, they are a focused on helping bloggers so you’d think they would “get it”. They should have embraced what ShoeMoney was doing and thanked him for pointing out the flaws. Instead, banning a high profile, popular member from their service caused a lot of backlash. Bloggers are a tight-knit bunch, and they should have known doing something like that was going to get them in hot water. MyBlogLog did finally do the right thing and unbanned ShoeMoney, but I think the damage is already done.
To add to their public relation problems, bloggers such as JenSense, have been reporting that MyBlogLog is keeping track of click data on AdSense and YPN click-throughs. Most webmasters consider this data very private and do not like the idea of giving it away for free. Again, this news is spreading through the blogger community, and the reaction is negative. I guess MyBlogLog could help things by allowing users to opt out of this option, but again, I think the damage is already done.
MyBlogLog has definitely slipped, and I’m not sure that they can fully recover. This is a good opportunity for competing service, like Explode, to gain some ground. I personally have taken MyBlogLog off my site, and am thinking of trying out some alternatives.
John Beckley Said,
July 18, 2007 @ 5:07 am
Wow…I was so pumped up and getting into the mybloglog scene and then I read this post and with what Shoe had to say about MBL, I’m a little bit more sceptical now. The idea is good but they need to work on authenticating what is happening otherwise its free for all.