MyBlogLog is a social networking system for blog readers to connect and learn about each other around their favorite blogs – and for blog publishers to access detailed information about their readers. Founded in March of 2005, the site relaunched this morning and took its social networking features out of beta stage. The company says it is currently serving 4000 live blog-based communities.
MyBlogLog was founded by Fox-acquired IGN cofounder Eric Marcoullier and Todd Sampson. The CEO is now Scott Rafer, former CEO of Feedster and current chairman of WINKsite.
The service lets users associate themselves with their favorite blogs, build a profile page about themselves and send internal messages. By default MyBlogLog users join the community of a site using MyBlogLog after ten visits to that site, but you can increase that number or require manual joining. Blog publishers can show a badge on their site with pictures of the most recent MyBlogLog members to visit the site and can display the five most popular outbound links from their blog on the blog community page. Click on any of our readers’ pictures at the bottom of this post and you can see what an individual’s page looks like. Thanks for reading everyone!
MyBlogLog says it helps break down the hierarchy that forms when everyone knows about a blog’s author but none of the readers know eachother. Here’s the CrunchNetworks community.
There’s currently no advertising on the site but MyBlogLog sells subscriptions to click analytics for $3 per month or $25 per year. Analytics leveraging user demographics are the next level things can be taken, the company told me. That’s something that the big social networking sites are already able to use, why shouldn’t bloggers? CEO Scott Rafer told me that there are currently about 1000 subscribers to the company’s premium analytics service.
The list of sites using MyBlogLog is quite interesting. It includes all the blogs from USA Today, Gawker and Rosie.com. The company has deployed close to 100 million profile cookies, signed up 14 thousand blogs in their first year and more than 1000 blogs currently display MyBlogLog widgets. I asked and Rafer says the company is pressing to be Attention Trust compliant as quickly as possible, that’s important for a site like this. It’s a service that is easy and fun enough to use that it could build a large number of users.
After some more thought, I feel like I should ad the following to this post: It’s a little creepy to think that just because I’ve joined the community around one Gawker blog, MyBlogLog knows every other URL I visit on the web. They really need to take tangible steps to demonstrate trustworthiness with that information – and I need ultimately to be in control of the data. The Attention Trust recorder, for example, gives me a simple browser button to click when I want to turn off recording the URLs I visit. I know that any one of the many cookies I’ve got on my browser could be reporting back to anyone about anything, but it would be good for MyBlogLog to make a good faith effort in regards to this.
I really like the look and feel of MyBlogLog. In some ways they are reminiscent of StumbleUpon (our coverage) and they perform a similar function to Bordee, a URL anchored message board tool we profiled last month.
MyBlogLog has a strong executive team, a compelling user experience and a smart business model. Aside from the privacy concerns (in a world with almost zero privacy in general), I think this a service that’s hard not to like.
Marshall, some thing went wrong with TCs layout. It looks all skewed. Also, see “”); //–>” at the end of this post.
Thanks Startups – you ever vigilant first commenter you! I think I’ve got it all fixed, everything look alright now?
MyBlogLog is in fact a VERY GOOD tool – what really sets it apart from many tools is the ability to track * OUTCLICKS * – this can be very helpful in determing what links are the most alluring to visitors.
It also seperates the visits by days – helpful to see the effects of any particular new post on traffic.
It also stands apart from many stats services in that it adds a community aspect ,
It does not overpower a blog with a large distractive image – a subtle, small, customizable image is all that is required for this free service.
It is highly recommended that other Bloggers try out this service
http://www.mybl...mmunity/google/
I’ve been using MyBlogLog for a couple months now. I often found it to be analagous to the passage ways under Disneyland. While all the hullabaloo of the blogosphere is above, MyBlogLog offers direct convenient connections between like minded people.
It’s fascinating watching new communities gain a foothold and then mushroom with usage.
Yes Marshall, looks perfect. Realized that it was taken care of immediately after making the post. Thank you.
this is really cool. what a great idea.
“Click on any of our readers’ pictures at the bottom of this post and you can see what an individual’s page looks like. Thanks for reading everyone!”
Where exactly? I do not see any pictures?
MyBlogLog rocks. still early for the product & lots more i’d like to see, but the concept is really on target and the service is incredibly useful to understand blog metrics and readers. nice job guys.
Social innovation and the democratization of the Web world strikes again!
Man… it’s PINK! Really bad choice of colours!
It’s pink because of the breast cancer thing.
I’ve been a paid subscriber to their click analytics for 6 months now, and it’s utterly and totally addictive
I can see minute by minute where readers come from, what they read, and which of the outgoing links they click. Wasted many an hour on that… Can really recommend to try it out. For a smaller blog the free service is totally sufficient.
The whole social network element was added much later, and I’m still not sure what to do with it. To me MyBlogLog is primarily a great analytical tool.
And the pink….yeah….horrible. But I think (hope) it’s a temporary thing, which was done about a week ago, apparently in support of the campaign against breast cancer. That’s a nice thing to do, but my eyes hurt each day looking at my stats in that horrid colourframe
What about publishing a pure statistics/analytics tool for other sites to use? Webtrends/Omniture for social networking … not a bad business.
I’m a user of it and find the analytics — even the ones you get for free — to be fantastic. They’re more detailed than Google Analytics.
Thanks,
Eric
http://breakout...ce.blogspot.com
Marshall
It would be great it you could put that “reader roll” permanently on the front page, maybe underneath the search box. that way you can see who is reading TechCrunch at this moment (as long as they are members of the techcrunch community)
i do that on my blog and I constantly get emails and comments from community members how much they like it.
you can also put community members faces next to the comments which has allowed me and my readers to know my frequent commenters much better.
all in all, its a great service. i have almost 500 community members. i bet you’d have 10,000 community members in a matter of days if you did those two things.
fred
Great people and making a great product. I can’t wait to work with them.
hmm…as long as it’s not running on windows i will be happy…
I love the pink!
this is cool. i went and added my profile .
I subscribed last night and already they have liv stats of my blog, with one simple code.
It seems like its faster than Google analytics.
I like the simple way that the stats are displayed.
I’ve had it on my site for a while now. I reviewed the service early on, and had a bit of a back-and-forth with Eric about the critique. Now that they’re out of beta it’ll be interesting to see what enhancements they’ll choose to make.
Personally, I like seeing who’s read my blog, but most of my regular readers (who I know from their comments, both online and offline) haven’t signed up. My referrer logs show that I am getting traffic from the site though, and I do check the free stats. I use SiteMeter (also free) and like to compare the two.
Nice Innovative service. I’ll be sure to join. Good job TC on the coverage.
The reader roll feature you added to the post is my favorite part of the service. It offers a glimpse of diverse readership combined and a greater sense of the TechCrunch community. Makes browsing feel more like a dialogue and group effort instead of a lecture by the blog owner.
I also would love to see you add it permanently to your sidebar. I think the value-add would be significant, especially compared to most blog bling, and it would likely help your advertisers because, right now, I never look at your sidebar (I know it as the “advertising area”). More useful features over there, like the MBL reader roll, would help break that stereotype.
I like MyBlogLog for the stats only, and used it before they launched the “community” thing, which now just kinda gets in my way.
I’m not interested in seeing pictures of a very small percentage of people who visit my blog, and I can already visit the sites of the people who comment.
BTW, what’s up with this Buddy Cards thing? Seems to me that the last thing you need is a way for more of the shady commenters to blatantly promote themselves on YOUR blog!
Fred and Andrew’s arguments are persuasive. We’ll try it out for a while.
Ok, added it although it’s screwed up the template and I need to figure out why. I’m still not letting it track my visits to other blogs for now.
ok, got the template issues sorted out.
i love it!
i love having my face on techcrunch
thanks Michael
you will have more members than me by tomorrow night
MyBlogLog is a fantastic service and Eric is very responsive to his user base. I have been using the service for several months and am impressed with their targeted rapid releases. Hopefully they continue to grow at a good rate. I think that they definitely represent the future of social networks – distributed.
I also registerd for membership of MyBlogLog few day ago. Its realy very useful social networking system.