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MyBlogLog – Is it Adding Value?

Posted By Darren Rowse 20th of February 2007 Blogging Tools and Services 0 Comments

Mybloglog-ProbloggerProBlogger’s MyBlogLog community has continued to grow in number over the last couple of weeks since I added it to my sidebar however the last few days have given me numerous reasons to wonder if I continue with it.

Community Message Spam – I am increasingly spending time deleting spammy comments left on the community from members. While I’m not overly concerned by the ‘check out my community/site/blog’ comments (although leaving a comment like that’s not really incentive for anyone to check out your community/site/blog in my experience) over the last few days I’ve had an increasing amount of ‘harder edged’ spam on my community – particularly linking to porn and drug sites.

The result is that I’m spending more and more time each day removing spam (something I have enough of with my email and blog comment spam).

I’ve suggested to MBL that they give community owners a higher level of moderation. Perhaps one way would be to not only send an email every time a comment is left with a link to the comment – but to include what the comment is as well as a link within the email to delete it (similarly to how WordPress does with comments).

Author Spam – Last night I received numerous invitations from other communities to join them as an author – despite the fact that I’ve never heard of the blogs (let alone the fact that I’ve not written on them). The communities in question listed hundreds of authors. Today a number of other bloggers posted that they’d been added as authors on blogs that they didn’t write on including ShoeMoney, John Chow, Danny Sullivan and Web Metrics Guru. Reading the comments on these blogs shows that many others were spammed this way also. (The Jason Calacanis community also looks like a victim of this as he seems to have been made an ‘author’ of an SEO community).

Reliability – I’ve had a few problems with deleting spammy comments this week. Sometimes it takes hitting ‘delete’ 3-4 times before they actually are deleted.

I guess I’m also still a little confused about what MyBlogLog offers bloggers (as I was last time I wrote about MyBlogLog). While there’s definitely potential there (they do seem to have a large number of enthusiastic users) I’m worried that in it’s current form their communities could actually hurt the reputation of the blogs that they form around.

I’ve already had complaints from a number of readers about the nature of some pictures appearing in the widgets and some of the content in comments left on the community pages. Unless there is added levels of moderation, tighter controls over authorship and some sort of features that adds to community around a blog I’m not sure it’s something I’ll continue much further with.

I’d love to see MyBlogLog go to the next level and become a useful tool to bloggers and blog readers – but adding any feature to a blog has the potential to add to and strengthen that blog’s brand and message – or take from it. When it takes from it there comes a time to take action.

update: The team at MyBlogLog have fixed the co-author spam problem. Well done MBL!

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. I’ve read on Shoemoney’s blog that they can also add blogs that you didn’t even wrote in your profile! Yahoo! need to do something.

    Spammers will never give us a chance?

  2. MyBlogLog Co-Author Spamming…

    I received an email a few days ago requesting me to become a co-author on Blogmemes Belgium MyBlogLog community. Thinking that I had received the invitation by mistake, I decided to ignore it. However, a post by Danny points out that these invitations …

  3. So, that guy who wanted me to be the author of that shit German site (I don’t know german) was a pathetic spammer ? That proves it. Booyah !!

  4. […] While some folks out there in the Blogosphere are chiming in sharing their experiences (Check out, for instance, the superb weblog entry review that John created over at Library Clips) about the potential business value from using the fine service of MyBlogLog, an offering that you would remember I have been talking about recently quite a bit, I thought I would go ahead and introduce you to another interesting widget that claims to take things further into the next level. That is right, I am talking about AutoRoll. […]

  5. […] While the hole has been plugged for now, the frequency with which MBL abuse is occurring does make one wonder, How much value is the site really providing? This may not be a problem for someone with limited exposure (such as myself) and I have found the site to be a useful tool in getting to know the people that read my blog and some authors whose blogs I read, largely without problems, I can also see how this can be a huge headache for someone like Mike Arrington. For people with such a wide reach, I hope MyBlogLog’s six point plan is successful in achieving the spiritual (blogically speaking) nirvana that it hopes for. […]

  6. lornadoone — give this post a look (it’s by one of our members) — http://qureyoon.blogspot.com/2006/11/complete-guide-to-mybloglogging.html

  7. Shouldn’t have opened my big mouth yesterday. I think the naked butt on my site today was there because I said I didn’t get avatar spam! ‘Doh! :)

    But Lisa, there is an easy way to block this stuff – just “X” the avatar from your MyBlogLog widget and it won’t show up again.

  8. Blogmemes is not responsible for the hack which occurred this weekend via the Mybloglog Web service.
    The Mybloglog account of one of the network’s members was pirated without his knowledge.
    We do not yet know why or who might be responsible.
    It is not in line with the network’s code of ethics nor in its interest to proceed in this manner and serves only to discredit our community.
    We are currently suffering many spam attacks on our Web sites, which we are combatting as much as possible.
    We thank the mybloglog team for having now corrected this problem.

    We are currently trying to answer all those who have written to us, to explain the situation to them.

    Claude
    co-founder of the blogmemes network

  9. […] Today, though, I finally read a post on ProBlogger about the recent problems with MyBlogLog. Apparently, there has been a huge problem with spam on this network in recent days and that has caused an uproar amongst it’s users. If you’re curious, here’s a response to the incident on MyBlogLog’s blog. […]

  10. We are launching AutoRoll, a new widget complementary to MBL.
    MBL displays the visitors of your blog.
    AutoRoll displays the other blogs your visitors are reading.
    The idea is to provide highly qualified incoming traffic for your blog. You can test it at: http://autoroll.criteo.com/
    Let me know how you feel about it compared to MBL!

  11. Rangga says: 02/22/2007 at 7:26 pm

    I received similar request, but then I asked “are you serious”? and he never replied.

    Anyway, I’ve never too much impressed with MyBlogLog community (although I have one neglected account there). I think most people are there to get some popularity — MySpace for blog? most likely

  12. […] MyBlogLog – Is it Adding Value? […]

  13. […] UPDATE: MBL have apologised to Jeremy for banning him but I’m still not convinced that it offers any value to the blogging community. Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger seems to feel the same. Tech Tags : ShoeMoney, MyBlogLog Bookmark to: Related ArticlesShoemoney hackedGoogle to buy YouTube?The new Google?Text Link AdsBlog Network […]

  14. […] MyBlogLog is a blog tracking/social network for bloggers that I’ve seen around on different sites. Darren over at Problogger recent wrote a piece on it as did JohnTP. I’m not sure I fully understand the concept yet but they do have a cool little widget that allows you to put a face on your readers, which at the same time allowing you to connect with other bloggers that share similar interests. The service is free but for a fee you can also get stats on your blog activity and what people find interesting. I’ve added the MyBlogLog widget to this site, you’ll notice it in the sidebar. Click on a readers pic will take you to their MyBlogLog profile where you’ll find other things the read finds interesting. […]

  15. whoa. and just as I was thinking about checking out MyBlogLog.

    MySpace for blogs? I think I’ll pass. I have enough spam in my email inbox to really handle any more spam.

  16. Hi Darren,

    I just posted on my blog what I encountered today with someone setting up a community for one of my blog posts, and also MBL didn’t completely remove my old community, when I changed domains.

    Makes me wonder why I still hold on to them too.

    Great post as always,
    Jason

  17. i use mybloglog a lot more then twitter. that really seems like a waste. it just doesn’t fit into my daily surfing. i think the boys at mybloglog will pull thru with this one. For those noobs it something to do. at the level your at problogger i don’t even see why you waste your time with communities online when you are your own commuinity within yourself. Man does it get lonley at the top.?

  18. […] blog, hosting, forums, News, invites, party, links, gmail, first post, google According to problogger, Mybloglog is not really doing it for him. But just recently Mybloglog has added a new feature on […]

  19. I’m not sure I fully understand the concept yet but they do have a cool little widget that allows you to put a face on your readers, which at the same time allowing you to connect with other bloggers that share similar interests.

  20. This is a fine example of why i sometimes smile because i do not have a comment section on my site, however do you think there are more advantages to allowing users to comment or more disadvantages, do you feel it takes too much time out of your day to delete spam e.t.c

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