I have long been a supporter of MyBlogLog and in many ways it was the many articles I wrote about how they could improve their site that led me to doing some limited consulting with Blogcatalog.
So news of MyBlogLog possibly departing saddens me, and will affect the web materially.
In many ways the only reason I still have a Yahoo account is MyBlogLog as I still log into their stats daily. The other reason is for Site Explorer and other webmaster tools – I don’t do paid search advertising with Yahoo.
The silly thing is MyBlogLog whilst it has never lived up to it’s promise isn’t in decline among people who actually use the site so much as it has been in decline in the mediasphere.
There might be a reduced number of widgets installed, but that is something hard to measure externally.
Using a comparrison that ignores widget installations such as Alexa clearly shows that in many ways MyBlogLog has been growing – even their search traffic has been pretty stable.
It is important to ignore widgets, as for instance with Compete it throws the numbers off totally giving Technorati some semblance of growth due to advertising widgets. (look at Quantcast for real measured numbers)
At the same time I would ignore Quantcast numbers for MyBlogLog, as they are not Quantified.
The Read Write Web article on the demise of MyBlogLog discusses the possibilities of the MyBlogLog API which has always been very feature rich – Blogcatalog has had one as well, though it probably needs a way to pass data back to a hosting page based on a visitor, and social graph data exposed.
The news doesn’t surprise me, the last post on the MBL Blog was a year ago. The next post is most likely to say they are shuting down.
APIs are important but ultimately you can get most of the demographic and social graph data you need without it as Tim can happily demonstrate.
I am not sure whether Tim ever used the API in anger for his commercial clients, but it had huge possibilities.
From a search context the loss of MyBlogLog will be missed – it was a good source of links from members of your community, and the pages in some ways were more favored than Technorati’s (more pages in primary index) but ultimately MyBlogLog has been infested with spam for years.
For me the biggest mistake by MyBlogLog was their implementation of user generated tagging.
Here is the user generated tag page for this blog – MyBlogLog tag pages have been infested with web vermin for 2 years.
The tag pages were introduced whilst the original founders were with the company.
Update From Yahoo
Yahoo on the YDN Blog have posted an update on the future of MyBlogLog. Nothing decided yet.
Hey YDN team – if you do finally axe MBL, can we get access to Yahoo Web Analytics instead?
I also find it a little strange that the post was on the YDN blog, maybe they forgot the MyBlogLog blog login?
33 Comments
BlogCatalog has a great opportunity to fill the void and learn from MBL. I personally stopped using widgets of either. I tend to look into my BlogCatalog account more often the MBL.
I wonder where would MyBlogLog be if some one else than Yahoo! bought it?
I really liked MyBlogLog but I also must confess I have been neglecting to use it this year.. I truely say though most of my inspirations came from this website…
Now as for Blog-catalog I still use this service til today my web spot their is some where 3-4 PR and I provide a STRAIGHTALK judgment on websites I visit through out the year!
I like all widgets from Yahoo , but i live in Poland and as I know 95 % of blogers use another widgets,another search machine .And nobody use MyBlogLog.
Wish a the best and Merry Christmas
Hi Andy,
Thanks for this share. Its sad to hear that Yahoo will shut down MyBlogLog.. I was on my way to launch a viral traffic program using MyBlogLog and now I’m stuck…
Good thing there still is a BlogCatalog… I better start concentrating on that… and specially on their API.
BTW, I wanted to comment on another article you wrote back in 2007 when BlogCatalog launched its API.
http://andybeard.eu/953/blogcatalog-api-launches.html
But I couldn’t post a comment so I came to this article. Hope it’s okay. :)
Remi Vladuceanu,
http://remivladuceanu.com
I like mybloglog but was forced to give it up because of company policies :( I now use google analytics and a bunch of different widgets to try to do the same thing. Mybloglog was a better solution IMO. Also I submitted my blog to blogcatalog and I use it to search for new blogs as well.
Most bloggers with MyBlogLog accounts get relevant amount of links for their sites though I’m not really sure if those links are dofollow as I can only see then on Google Analytics however if MyBlogLog will shut down at any time, I’m afraid that bloggers will have to be ready to lose some links.
I just started a new blog and as with any new blog, I have always gone to MBL to list my new blogs. This has always been my process (right or wrong). I appreciated the links.
I can’t tell you how disappointed I am and hope that there is a change of minds. I used to use blogCatalog but I found them slow to approve new blogs.
Anybody know of any other types of sites like MBL we could use?
Thanks, J. Sampson.
I wonder what the business plan of mybloglog was – I fear that many of these great FREE services will be shutting shop over the next 12-18 months as any funding they had dries up or the owners / developers move onto other things.
Sad really but at least many of the fore-runners sparked ideas in others that led to new services that might be around for a bit longer.
Never liked MyBlogLog in the first place. It’s a place for social bloggers. If all you care about is making money, then stop worrying about MyBlogLog or BlogCatalog, and just make money.
Sad to see mybloglog going down. Lots of people will be losing a lot of backlinks from this but if you know what you are doing and your not just a spammer you will find ways to recover from this.
Good post Andy!
However, I’m never certain of the accuracy of the Alexa tool.. have you tried running it through Google Trends? I think this is by far one of the more accurate tools for comparing websites, or Google ad planner? (Which i’m still totally confused by how it can work out demographic information!) I recently did a post on my blog using Google Trends to compare the four major record labels, quite an interesting tool..
I haven’t looked into MyBlogLog or the other you mentioned but I will now. This is my first visit to your site and I may have to subscribe. Thanks!
It’s a place for social bloggers. If all you care about is making money, then stop worrying about MyBlogLog or BlogCatalog. Thanks for sharing the information.
I agree with Vlad – MyBlogLog could do better if it was sold to somone with a complimentary business model. The first problem would be to clean it up though. It was/is a spammers paradise.
I’ve been coming back to your site on and off for about 6 months and I’ve finally decided to make a comment; I’m impressed. A niche marketer plus you find the time to put all this information together us. Maybe you should kick off a training site (subscription based, of course) and teach us more.
P.S Read your comment spam policy and decided against adding any my URLs as I hate to be derided!
I just recently started my blog and started using MBL with it. Although I am sad that this venue for the bloggers will soon be closed, on the personal note I am glad that I did not invest too much time learning the ropes.
Best,
Ana
Andy, I’ve been having a good dig around your site and there is some amazing info on here. I have a couple of questions: You mentioned that you were going to release a Wordpress theme based on Sandbox. Did you get round to it? I can only seem to find plugins on here. Second, I signed up to IMS and there’s some really good ideas on Dan’s site but do you know if the dynamic linking idea is still valid? i.e. will Google now spider these links/penalise you for using them?
Thanks.
I didn’t release it as there would have been significant work maintaining it and even more work providing support which at the time just wasn’t viable.
There are ways to do dynamic linking still though it realy depends on the site and what you need to achieve.
It’s ok. Having had a good dig around you blog I think I’ve now got the idea. Looking at some of your posts you mention that you use article directories to source content for you niche sites. Typically, do you build an entire site using this type of content or do you mix it up with your own articles?
That is probably some very old articles you read.
3rd party content can work but for money sites I would go with 100% unique
Cool. Thanks for the info. I’ve been using rewritten articles and PLR for a while and these to work well so I’ll guess it’s best to stick with it.
Never really figured out how mybloglog could help me. I’ve been on it, just went again, still don’t see any advantages. RIP
Andy,
Another web 2.0 property bites the dust, or nearly anyway. I agree with a few of the comments above. Why wouldn’t Yahoo put it up for sale to a company that would benefit from it. Win Win for both parties. Its not as if its like frienfeed and been bought out by a third party to die.
I can well imagine that building a custom is a nightmare to support. Oh well, time to scour the web for more freebies!
I really hope that Yahoo decides to keep MyBlogLog, I’ve used it on numerous occasions and it was excellent. Got a lot of nice targeted traffic. If this is the end, RIP you will be missed.
I just actually started with MyBlogLog and still trying to get around with the available tools. I haven’t figured out how this can help but good thing I haven’t spent much time yet only to find out that it will be closing down sooner. Thanks for the heads up.
I have always liked MyBlogLog. It’s not something I rely on for anything and I won’t be particularly sad if it does shut down. However, I have their widget on many of my blogs and would like to see them keep it going. I’ve never really used BlogCatalog for some reason but maybe I will have to start.
Andy, can you clarify? Is MyBlogLog being gone a done deal? Any chance they won’t go away? I consider Blog Catalog and MyBlogLog the two staples among blog directories along with Technorati (in spite of their persistent poor usability).
I am not sure what is happening, though I know that they have a complicated decision process – I do have my ear to the ground in various places.
Good stuff to be share. I fear that many of these great FREE services will be shutting shop over the next 12-18 months as any funding they had dries up or the owners / developers move onto other things. Goo, keep going.
there are too many blogs, too many blog catalogs and the like. off with all of ‘em!
I do hope mybloglog sticks around. It has always been a top 3 blog directory IMO, but always lacked certain community feel that blog catalog can get (with discussions and such)
Hi there
I had no idea mybloglog was in danger of closing i used to use it a lot at first, when I first got into blogging, but I have to admit I dont use it much anymore, i stopped when the last time I was in there I got lots of incoming requests from women with dodgy x rated websites on their profiles lol, so maybe they should take action against some of these people as its defo a put off !
Woc
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[...] Andy Beard has pretty much said flat out he thinks Yahoo is letting MyBlogLog die a slow death. It is very true that updates on the MyBlogLog blog seem to have stopped. It makes you wonder if there is anyone still there. Screen updates of your blog no longer seem to work. [...]