5 Things MyBlogLog Needs To Improve
“Discover who visits your favorite sites (including your own)!” That is what MyBlogLog states it will help you do. More and more bloggers are using MyBlogLog to find out who is visiting their sites. While the business model is so interesting that Yahoo acquired MyBlogLog, the MyBlogLog model’s value to users is itself limited and under a lot of testing. Wide adoption of a service or a product does not guarantee or mean that a service is definitely useful; it simply means that the service or the product has done good marketing and is gaining more subscribers or customers.
Following are 5 things that I think MyBlogLog, or Yahoo, need to improve or work on in the long run. Just because a business model exists does not mean it will work. It has to be fixed and improved constantly. It is more important to fix current bugs that affect users or the overall service instead of introducing new fancy features.
5 things MyBlogLog needs to improve
- MyBlogLog only tracks other MyBlogLog users
MyBlogLog lets you discover people who visit your site only if they are also MyBlogLog users. Otherwise, you get even fewer stats than your regular stats program.
“MyBlogLog was designed to track only registered MyBlogLog users“, you say? Then why is everyone running around, including MyBlogLog admins, claiming that anyone who visits your site can be tracked? The original promise of the program was to discover who visited your site, and not which MyBlogLog members visit your site.
This bad point about MyBlogLog is also its strongest selling point: if a user is registered, it allows a site owner to find out exactly who was visiting a site including their name and site url.
- I visit your site only if I see you on my MyBlogLog widget
Many bloggers have stopped visiting other sites unless they see someone in their MyBlogLog widget. That means these bloggers are only visiting the sites of those MyBlogLog members who visit them. That also means these bloggers do not visit, or rarely visit, the sites of their commentors or people who are not MyBlogLog users.
MyBlogLog is supposed to let you find out who visits you. It is not supposed to let you prefer MyBlogLog users over non-MyBlogLog users. MyBlogLog needs to promote a mentality through the MyBlogLog blog that will allow people to realize that they should not avoid visiting sites that do not appear in their MyBlogLog stats.
- Using MyBlogLog makes you depend on MyBlogLog servers for your site to load
The MyBlogLog code loads a lot of things from the MyBlogLog servers. That means if the MyBlogLog servers go down, your site will load slow or keep loading. That has happened to me a lot, where my site has taken up to a minute to load simply because some image from the MyBlogLog server was not loading.
- MyBlogLog widget is not customizable
When you show the MyBlogLog code or the widget on your site, one of the only things you can customize is the colors. Otherwise, you are stuck with showing the standard format of the MyBlogLog widget, including the advertisement link that points back to their site.
Some people may say that a free service comes with a link pointing back to the service. My point here is not to argue whether or not the link back to MyBlogLog should be necessary; what I am showing you is one of the things that show how and why the MyBlogLog widget is not customizable.
- MyBlogLog communities are spammable blogrolls in disguise
These can be two points, though I will combine them as one. The MyBlogLog communities are supposedly places where people can interact and find out more about each other. In reality, the MyBlogLog communities are nothing more than blogrolls. MyBlogLog communities currently display only the names and links to people and sites you are associated with.
MyBlogLog does allow you to e-mail other people, though that has resulted in spam messages, including people sending “Thank you for visiting me” emails to you everytime you visit their site or MyBlogLog profile, probably resulting in spam advertisement to be disguised in unwanted “thank you” e-mails. Such a trend is increasing, turning MyBlogLog into more of a MySpace community where many spammers spam every profile they come across just to get someone to visit a specific profile in return.
So, what is the verdict?
The verdict is that you have to figure out your own verdict. If the above things are insignificant to you and you still consider MyBlogLog to have an actual purpose, go ahead and keep hugging MyBlogLog. Personally, I am still using the MyBlogLog service as of this post, as it does one thing for me that has made me keep it on my site: it shows me new MyBlogLog members who visit my site. It does introduce new people to me, and it is easy to find out who has visited my site.
How Yahoo’s control of MyBlogLog is shaping things
One of the things, in addition to the above list, that I would love MyBlogLog to have is to allow anonymous users to register their site addresses, using relevant e-mail addresses from the same site domain, so that people are not required to register new accounts, but are allowed to enter in a url that is kept in a cookie or associated with their IP. That way, we can have more non-MyBlogLog members tracked also.
However, considering the fact that Yahoo bought MyBlogLog, we may probably see more strict registration requirements where people who do not register will continue to be left out of the MyBlogLog service. Recently Yahoo announced about improving MyBlogLog, though the above issues are not being addressed yet, according to the announcement. At least it is a good thing that Yahoo is working on improving some things about the service it acquired not too long ago.
What do you think?
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( May 15th, 2007 at 9:50 pm )
hmm… these are some very interesting suggestions and thoughts on MyBlogLog. I personally don’t place their widget on my blog (your #4 point explains my decision) and it didn’t really help me to discover new interesting blogs unlike comments do.
I do like seeing the faces/icons of people visiting the same blog I read. Once in awhile I check out my MyBlogLog community, which is obviously very small. But that’s about everything I use MyBlogLog com. Hopefully, they’ll listen to your suggestions re: blog’s style and interface and improve their service.
( May 15th, 2007 at 11:29 pm )
Vivien-Inspirationbit, thanks for the comment. I have noticed, yes, that your site is MyBlogLog-free. If it was customizable and all the other points remained the same, would you start using MyBlogLog?
I find many of the icons interesting and cute also, and clicking them sometimes adds to the fun “Wow, who is this?” However, I sometimes feel disappointed if a spammer keeps coming to my site and keeps changing their MyBlogLog icon from time to time. Good thing there is the “x” button there.
I talked with Eric from MyBlogLog yesterday about this, and he did listen to my suggestions. I am guessing MyBlogLog is very open to the idea of improving and being better for both bloggers and blog readers. I will post more on this soon.
( May 16th, 2007 at 2:10 am )
You are right, such improvements would be welcome. I use MyBlogLog on my site because I like to see who’s quietly visiting my blog (although I can see only those who are MyBlogLog members). I was about to take it off though, because it makes the site load slower. If they don’t improve this, I’m going to take it away. Regarding my community there, I have no clue what to do with it. I’m waiting for their next move, to figure it out.
( May 16th, 2007 at 4:06 am )
Simonne, yes, such improvements would be amazing. I would love to consult and offer consulting to MyBlogLog/Yahoo on this, on how to improve and add features to address the above issues more and take more steps towards tighter and stronger communities.
Even though the service is faster now [the home page seems to be loading faster, though it may be Yahoo servers or my new internet service], even today in the middle of the day my site simply stopped loading for about a minute because of fetching some code and images from the MyBlogLog-Yahoo servers.
The community aspect does need a renovation. More on this soon. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. I will post something on this soon also.
( May 16th, 2007 at 11:05 am )
Yep, we’re listening. Great article by the way…
I’ll answer your suggestions by number
1-We track all your visitors, but can only show the avatars of the people who have joined the service. The stats for your site will show as ___ Readers (MBL members) and ___ visitors (all visitors). Unfortunately we can’t show you the virtual identity of anyone who hasn’t told us they want us too. If we did, people would probably call us a little too ‘big brother’.
2-I think people do what is easy. I know I do. And clicking the faces of the people who have visited your site is easy. I like your ending suggestion though. Makes sense.
3-We have been on Yahoo! servers for a few months now and we haven’t seen many problems since this move. MyBlogLog grew so fast initially that server loads were an issue, but since we are on these new servers, it’s been smoother sailing.
4-We are in the process of redesigning the widget right now. I’ll make sure the team hears this suggestion. It does make sense to have the name of the service there, so other users who want a widget can go and make their own, but maybe there is a less obtrusive way to do that.
5-The spam annoys us too. Right now we are having to take our engineers off of cool projects to deal with spam and that stinks. There are several different tests we are doing to make the communities more ‘user-moderated’, I can’t go into them in detail, but please know that we are not going to sit back and let spammers take over here. Communities are our big thing, and if they aren’t giving our users a value then a core priority is being overlooked.
I just wanted you to know that we are listening and posts like this get our attention. I appreciate your thoughtful suggestions and I will make sure the team sees this post.
( May 16th, 2007 at 11:00 pm )
Robyn Tippins, welcome to the site, and thank you for taking to time to read and reply to each point. Yesterday I talked with Eric about this and a few other things also. To people who are not aware, Robyn Tippins is the Community Manager for MyBlogLog.
Robyn, I will go ahead and reply to each of your answers as well.
1 : True. I have a few suggestions on how to get over the issue of anonymous users not being able to be tracked, easily. I will share that with you or Eric soon.
2 : You’re right; what people do is easy. I myself click colorful icons to find out who the icon owner is. However, as time passes, it seems more and more people are visiting others only when they see others in their MyBlogLog roll. Sure, this is not something that MyBlogLog is trying to promote, but having some things in the FAQ or even community posts or bulletins [we probably need them] can help people learn more on what the service is for and how the service can be abused, and thus, avoided.
Also, by the way, this point # 2 is thinking for the long term goal, where the ethical mentality of judging people based on whether or not they visit a site and whether or not they are also MyBlogLog members can hurt the blogging community as a whole. The users themselves need to be aware of such a trend also, as it is not solely, or even mainly, MyBlogLog’s responsibility. If more and more people start using MyBlogLog to judge who to visit, more frustrated bloggers will start avoiding the service all together as they will feel forced to use the service if they want more visitors.
3 : Good point. I have seen improvements. However, the periodic slowdowns still remain, and I am not sure why. For example, today around 1:50 pm [PST] or so, my site was loading slow or not loading completely because of some image waiting to be downloaded from the MyBlogLog/Yahoo servers. If things are still being migrated, great. However, if things have already been migrated, then I am hoping these slowdowns are random or due to some other factor, and that they will soon go away.
4 : That is indeed good news. I am looking forward to see what your team has in store. I have a few suggestions also that I will try to share with you soon.
5 : I think spam even annoys those spammers, though they still keep on spamming. I am glad to know that you are working on different things to work on this issue. Also, the concept of communities itself needs a lot of work. I will let you know more details about that soon also.
Thanks Robyn for coming and explaining things. I really appreciate it. This should help others a lot who come across this post. Thank you also letting the MyBlogLog team know about this. I will be in touch with you, Eric and the MyBlogLog team more about this and other things soon.
( May 16th, 2007 at 11:25 pm )
I just use sitemeter and look at who has visited from there. I also get to see the referring URL.
I do visit the blogs of people who comment on mine. I guess I just don’t want to be loaded up with “stuff” in the sidebars (but I am loaded up anyway
)
( May 17th, 2007 at 12:59 am )
Laurie, thank you for visiting the site and commenting.
Many people use stats programs like sitemeter or even Awstats to find out who visited them, including referring URL. How did you find out about this site, if I may ask?
You have a point. Your site seems to have critical and time-sensitive information, so every part of the page matters. I also like visiting the sites of people who comment on my site, though sometimes it may take a week or so before I can get back to everyone.
Thanks again for the comment.
By the way, you have a very interesting site.
( May 17th, 2007 at 5:50 am )
Thank you for your comments about my blog.
I found your site through the D-List, which I stumbled upon on another blog when I was blog-hopping. (I like reading about what others are interested it, looking at how they think, etc.)
I got so excited about the D-List that I stayed up half the night upgrading my template and getting rid of that no follow tag. The blogosphere, the whole internet, should be user-driven and not controlled by the big guys.
( May 17th, 2007 at 12:11 pm )
What about the FAQ? Right now it’s limited, non consistent, and not clearly helpful. It should be thorough. They need to hire more people to work on customer service or something, so people who need help can get the help they want within a day. If I use the service and it sucks or is confusing, I won’t be around a few days later (when a slow response to my inquiries arrives in the mail) . It is like a luxury or an add-on to my site, so it needs to be really good in the first try, or I am not going to bother messing my site with something that is deemed cool, but is actually not upt o when it comes to performance or usefulness.
( May 17th, 2007 at 12:41 pm )
Bes, to answer your question- for me to start displaying MyBlogLog on my blog it’ll depend on how customizable their widget becomes, and how fast it will load.
And also I guess it depends on how addicted I’ll get to MyBlogLog community. Presently, I’m not such a big fan of it. I guess I have to spend more time exploring Mybloglog.
( May 17th, 2007 at 1:25 pm )
Melissa,
I recently took over this department and have been answering emails usually within a few minutes. I don’t work evenings or weekends, so sometimes the times there are a little longer, but I try my best to get to emails quickly.
Also, we are working on getting more help on customer service, and, you’ll be thrilled to know that we are working on an updated FAQ. I just wanted to let you know that I’m reading your mind.
( May 17th, 2007 at 1:26 pm )
Sorry I should clarify that I took over the customer service aspect of MyBlogLog. My first sentence sounds so lofty you’d think I was running the whole show LOL
( May 17th, 2007 at 11:27 pm )
This is going to be a long comment reply, so if anyone has any questions about MyBlogLog, please go ahead and ask, and hopefully Robyn Tippins will answer or address your concerns here. Thank you Robyn for taking the time to answer the questions here.
Laurie, thank you for letting me know how you found the site. The D-list is indeed growing and being used by many people.
Do you have to change the blogspot template a lot? Blogspot should allow people to turn off the no follow tag in the admin pane or something. It is nice that you are going through the templates to help others through this.
Melissa, good point. MyBlogLog definitely needs work on that too, and Robyn has already started doing a good job on it. The service does need to change the mentality, and it seems MyBlogLog is analyzing things to see what needs improving and how.
Vivien-inspiration, thanks for sharing that, Vivien. So if the widget was customizable and fast loading [no issues due to external servers dependency], you would use it. Also, you mentioned the community; so right now, the community concept they have is not interesting to you, I see. Thanks again for clarifying.
Robyn Tippins, thanks for explaining that, I really appreciate it. If MyBlogLog needs help or consultation, I am currently available.
If anyone else has any questions or concerns regarding MyBlogLog or something related, please go ahead and ask.
( July 8th, 2007 at 12:15 am )
[...] while ago I talked about 5 things that MyBlogLog can improve. I can see some of the improvements being implemented that I recommended to Eric at MyBlogLog, like [...]