Comments on: MyBlogLog News (significant)

By: Lord Matt

Lord Matt — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 09:56:10 +0000

Amen to that Andy. (darn I kep making religiouse references).

A perpose for the trappings (contact and community) would be ideal.

By: Scott Rafer

Scott Rafer — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 22:42:50 +0000

Thanks for the kinds words (and continuing the feedback to the team). I’m going back to my vacation now.

By: David Airey

David Airey — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 13:11:01 +0000

An insightful post, Andy.

The comment from Eric was interesting too. By ‘unreciprocated’ I guess he means that you can send unlimited messages to 20 people as long as there’s some conversation happening.

By: Robyn Tippins

Robyn Tippins — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 19:16:22 +0000

Andy, the message cap is just one thing we’re trying. There are several other methods that are currently being discussed and researched, one of which is my personal favorite, that are very close to a trial themselves.

My hope is that we can learn from the suggestions of users and strike a balance that most everyone is happy with…

You’re right in that MBL is focusing on releasing an API. I love your MBL API post (not sure how I missed it initially as I subbed to your blog a long time ago) and your MBL wishlist. I’ve bookmarked both. Thanks for your continued communication. I always get much from your blog.

By: Andy Beard

Andy Beard — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 16:13:47 +0000

I have never been that keen on the please check out my community messages, and report them whenever it is obvious they haven’t actually visited my blog.

Make it easier to report, with ticket system

In many ways BlogCatalog have copied a lot of what is good about MBL, and they still have a lot of work to do, but I love the distinction between the shoutbox and reviews. It doesn’t however provide a method of 2 way communication as it jumps backwards and forwards between profiles, rather than offer some kind of threading.

The hardest thing for you is that those who have built up their community by using the message system extensively are going to be hit by it most, and those with the largest voices honestly couldn’t care less about the messages and would much prefer comments on their own blogs, and even then rarely respond to comments

My Community is less than half of my subscribers, but I am sure most of them have MyBlogLog accounts.

What you really need is to have a purpose for joining a community, and a purpose for reciprocating a contact. There are lots of marketers who have displayed the MBL widget because they had a community they didn’t even know about, and have no idea how to handle or make use of it.

The comment system seems to be enjoyed more by bloggers on Blogspot than anyone else, because their comment systems don’t allow for email notifications.

I recently gave some ideas for people to prepare for the MBL API
Scott had previously hinted that API was the route that would be taken rather than building out lots of internal features.

By: Eric Marcoullier

Eric Marcoullier — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 15:41:09 +0000

Andy — I’d appreciate your take, either publicly or online, on the 20 message per day thing. What’s stressing me out is that no one seems to be taking the time to read the post that their commenting on.

What people seem to be missing is that the limit is 20 *unreciprocated* messages per day. The goal is to limit the number of spammy “please check out my community messages” sent but leave a clear path for real communication. Thoughts?