A Brief Analysis of MyBlogLog
December 20th, 2006 by Robert Yeager
I’ve only been blogging a couple of weeks now, but I am already a huge fan of MyBlogLog. You could say that I started blogging only after observing the MyBlogLog widget on TechCrunch. Blogging in isolation is rather pointless. MyBlogLog’s “reader widget” makes you feel you are not blogging alone, by providing tangible proof that someone cares enough to visit your blog postings. It’s also fun from the point of view of leaving my mark on other people’s blogs…my own “Kilroy Was Here” or “Sign of Zorro” mark. Both bloggers and readers can benefit.
MyBlogLog has the two key ingredients for success nowadays…social components and widgets. According to this post, they are experiencing accelerated growth across all metrics. The widget growth in particular is what caught my eye…widgets are a key component to viral adoption on the Internet. It’s funny that MyBlogLog is reporting a doubling of widget growth month-over-month, because that is similar to Cooqy’s growth for the last three months as well. Coincidence? Or is there a mathematical formula in action that describes widget propagation?
One metric that wasn’t reported is their total number of registered users. Since they have an online database of user accounts in the form of their HTML directory, I quickly wrote a program to count all the users. As of today, I counted 29,450 user accounts.
Sometimes when a company creates their product/service and releases it to the world, the utility of their creation cannot be fully appreciated. I believe this is the case with MyBlogLog, in the sense that their name and focus seems to be exclusively on bloggers. I feel that MyBlogLog is more like a socialization engine for any and all web pages. Sort of like a MySpace without walls. [Speaking of MySpace, I have added a MyBlogLog widget to Cooqy’s MySpace profile here: http://www.myspace.com/cooqy]
As good as MyBlogLog is, there are some issues that I find with their service. First, their name doesn’t really describe the power of their creation (they are looking for a new domain name, thank goodness). Second, as this post suggests, spamming is an interesting challenge. Third, their widget and website design is functional, but not what you would call eye candy [BTW: is it just me, or does the widget frequently chop off lower case descenders? I have reported this issue to their tech support.]. Finally, their overall technology design is open to all sorts of attacks…I’ll post more about this later, as it relates to widgets in general.
I must admit that I am contemplating creating my own version of MyBlogLog, perhaps for eBay and/or for the masses. I feel that in its current form, MyBlogLog is not capitalizing on what I perceive to be the overall opportunity. With that being said, imitation is the highest form of flattery. Hats off to MyBlogLog for giving us something new and useful!
15 Responses to “A Brief Analysis of MyBlogLog”
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Great post, man.
Good points. It is fun to leave your mark, and also really great to know that you are not blogging in isolation. I got here because I saw YOUR face on mybloglog.
I started on it today when someone told me about it in my comment section. It’s pretty neat.
I could not agree more on the social interest of MyBlogLog !
As already mentioned by someone else, I found your blog through My Blog Log.
I agree with a lot of what you’ve said, especially your comments on how important the service is for creating a true social network.
I also agree with you over the niggles - tech design, interface and most of all name.
However, as with most really good modern websites it WILL get better with time.
The most people use it, the more people pay for premium services, the more advertisers they can get, the better the design will get.
From what I can remember wasn’t Technorati a bit shaky in its early days? It wasn’t until money came in that it started to perk up and look pretty.
I agree…in general services improve their look and feel with time.
The good news is that their community and widget services already rock!
Funny, I blogged about MyBlogLog today as well…
http://kiskeyacity.blogspot.com/2006/12/mybloglog-good-for-traffic.html
Overall, it’s definitely enhanced my blog and greatly contributed to traffic. And yes, I found out about your site through it… :-)
Astute observations.
I like the name, but I like even more that myBlogLog shows the bluring of distinctions in terms of what constitutes a blog and what not, allowing the cyberspace to increase in fluidity?
I agree. I didn’t realize how powerful the reporting engine is. And it seems to be more accurate than Performancing which I’m using as well. MyBlogLog has helped my traffic as well.
I actually came to you via MyBlogLog. I’m so behind on understanding the dynamic of it and am poking around (instead of working, coughcough) and thought I’d check out some people who stopped by earlier.
Had I not done so, I wouldn’t have found you. So hallelujah for mybloglog. So far, I have thumbs up.
I find that I am meeting many more people via MyBlogLog vs. MySpace!
Good post, Mybloglog help me very much for my traffic…
I agree with you about the social interest…
hey cooqy :) Nice review about Mybloglog :)
strangely enough, I also dropped in here becasue of mybloglog, not recognising you as a regular in rashbre central
your post just made me register at mybloglog! very nice!