Today I had a few extra minutes and thought I’d do some blog browsing. I visited some old favorite blogs and noticed one thing that concerned me.
Many of the blogs that I visited had removed the MyBlogLog widget. So then I logged into MyBlogLog account and noticed that there were fewer subscribers to some of the communities and my own community had shrunk.
In fact, when I looked at the top 10 A-list bloggers, I noticed only 1 had the MyBlogLog widget on their site.
What Has Caused the Exodus of MyBlogLog Subscribers?
So I started doing a little research into why this was happening.
I read old reviews about the acquisition of MyBlogLog by Yahoo and really found nothing.
Now I knew that some bloggers have had a problem with MyBlogLog from the beginning when it was reported that their widget was reading and possibly recording traffic to the blogs that used their widget. It was even reported that this widget would read and log clicks to Adsense. Needless to say, this didn’t set well with a lot of people.
Even with those reports though, many bloggers were adding the MyBlogLog widget to their blogs in huge numbers.
It wasn’t until I started reading post on other blogs about Yahoo requiring a MyYahoo account to login to MyBlogLog that I started seeing a lot of discontent. Obviously many MyBlogLog users refused to make the changeover and decided to leave rather than be forced to open a Yahoo account.
Why would Yahoo make this move? Surely they knew it would drive away subscribers?
Life After The Yahoo Acquisition
Personally, I don’t like the move either. I have multiple MyBlogAccounts and Yahoo accounts. When I go blog browsing, I have one MyBlogLog account I use. However, sometimes another profile will pop up on the blogs MyBlogLog widget. This doesn’t set well with me.
I’m not sure what Yahoo’s plan is for MyBlogLog is. From where I’m standing, it doesn’t look like a good fit for Yahoo. I believe their move of requiring a Yahoo account to login proves this.
So what’s in store for MyBlogLog? I don’t know honestly. I don’t use MyBlogLog as much as I did previously. It also seems to have become very spammy.
I’ll continue to show the widget in the short term, but I’m wanting to see some advantages of using it.
What experiences have you had with MyBlogLog? Do you still use the widget? Share your experiences with the rest of us by dropping a comment.
8 responses so far ↓
1 Thomas Sinfield // Nov 13, 2007 at 9:58 pm
I am frustrated with it, I transfered my mybloglog account to a yahoo account of mine, but i dont use yahoo so it was inactive and has attached the myblog account to the yahoo account but when i try and renew the yahoo account I just get errors!
2 Chrispian // Nov 13, 2007 at 10:10 pm
Yeah, requiring a yahoo login killed Flickr dead. Wait, no, it didn’t
I don’t think that’s going to be the major issue. Privacy concerns will also likely be better with Yahoo owning it. It’s also probably a good fit for Yahoo because eyeballs of any kind eventually end up meaning money.
Most people don’t like change, me included. I resisted the Flickr > Yahoo login for as long as I could. In the end the service was good regardless and it’ll come down to the same thing with MyBlogLog I think.
3 Jennifer // Nov 14, 2007 at 12:26 pm
I am pretty much on the same page as you. I continue to show the widget, but don’t use them as much as I used too.
4 Brian Free // Nov 14, 2007 at 1:00 pm
I dont show the widget anymore. I gave into getting a Yahoo account, but it really is an annoying change, and I can understand why a lot of people skipped the migration. oh well, Yahoo and their egos, that’s why they are 2nd best
5 Don // Nov 14, 2007 at 3:02 pm
I happen to agree with Brian. As I said earlier, I have several accounts and remembering to log into a certain account when I visit a certain website is a pain in the butt. It’s a lot easier to just not log in.
6 Wayne Liew // Nov 14, 2007 at 8:53 pm
I used to monitor what are the new faces in my MyBlogLog widget when my blog is getting pennies of visitors but at this time, I don’t do that any more.
I see putting the widget on our blog as contributing rather than usefulness because sometimes, it is MyBlogLog that get us traffic when we do blog browsing.
Since we are getting traffic from it, we felt obliged to place the widget since if everybody don’t, we might lose that chunk of traffic.
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8 Mrs. Mecomber // Apr 4, 2008 at 7:23 pm
I think the main reason so many ppl are leaving MyBlogLog is because since the dumb Yahoo merger, no one can SIGN IN ANYMORE! It’s locked me out of my account twice and I can’t get back in. I HATE MyBlogLog since Yahoo. GRRRR
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