Look Out MyBlogLog - Here Comes Explode
Marshall Kirkpatrick
30 comments »
A new open source cross-site social networking service called Explode launched today and looks like a very appealing alternative to the now Yahoo! owned MyBlogLog. Built by UK open-source social network provider Curverider (whose primary product, Elgg, is similar to PeopleAggregator), Explode offers an embeddable widget that links out to users’ respective profile pages on any social network but allows commenting and befriending in one aggregated location. I found Explode via Steve O’Hear’s The Social Web, one of my new favorite blogs.
Explode users can search for other users by interest tag, they can view each others’ Facebook style “comment walls,” and users can access their site’s traffic stats for free using the javascript widget that Explode provides. Users of MySpace, Vox and other javascript hostile networking sites can post an image widget that simply links out to their page on Explode. The javascript widget will display the most recent of a person’s friends to have done “something online” according to the least clear part of the service’s FAQ.
MyBlogLog has been a fascinating success story - it’s very appealing to see the faces of people who have been reading your blog. People are willing to expose a lot of personal information in exchange for the experience. The service’s explosive growth, if you will, combined with its underlying data capture capabilities lead to a Yahoo! acquisition.
Unfortunately MyBlogLog has been plagued by problems. Spammers (nothing personal Mr. Online-Pharmacy, thanks for reading my blog) are relatively easy to block from your widget but identity problems have been a bigger challenge. From my face appearing in comments left by my friend after I borrow his computer to my boss’s face appearing in comments I leave because we co-author the same blog to Michael Arrington’s dog’s face appearing next to comments I leave around the web for who knows what reason - MyBlogLog cookies have a tendency to get mixed up. This month’s spate of random invitations to be added as co-author other users’ blogs was just the most recent issue. On top of it all, I now find myself unable to gracefully deny having read a post on someone’s blog once my face has appeared in their sidebar.
Even if these problems were all solved, there’s a level of data capture by Yahoo! via the service, and subsequent lack of access on the part of users, that’s disconcerting. You can opt out of a lot in MyBlogLog and still use the service, but it’s not at all obvious how to do so. An open source, community based alternative could prove very welcome.
Explode requires that users click a link on a site they visit in order to befriend that site’s author, unlike MyBlogLog’s default addition of users to a site’s community after a given number of visits to that site. It would be nice if Explode allowed users to add each other as friends while on the Explode site and unless there’s good reason to prohibit it I expect this functionality will be added soon.
The idea of adding a cross-network friendship and commenting community isn’t a shocking innovation, but if Explode can implement it well then it could find strong support among users. The creators of Explode report that they will soon implement widget skinning, OpenID and an API. Explode is a simple system, but it solves a very clear problem of siloed social networks without asking people to abandon the services they are already invested in.
How does one keep up with all of these new launches. Maybe that’s why it’s a full-time job here at TC.
the co. name of Explode - lol, that alone sounds like a cheezy fad co. that’s bound to come and pass
not to mention their rad early 80s-looking logo
Oh yeah? What decade is the handle “…some Drifter” inspired by?
Pastel colours: check. Rounded corners: check. Tag cloud: check. Logo… wtf?
I wonder what Yahoo is thinking right about now.
Speaking of two excellent services, what is the deal with the first ? MyBlogLog has been off the TC pages for days now, and we miss it.
I think MyBlogLog has reached the tipping point in their network effect and they’re bound to sustain their position in this particular niche, especially when they’re working hard on fixing all problems that arise in a “timely” fashion.
I’m very skeptical at this point on how much market share Explode will be able to pull.
AL: According to the stats I’ve seen reported, MyBlogLog is on 45,000 blogs, a good portion of which are tech blogs. I would not consider this to be a safe position, nor would I consider that to be “mainstream” traction.
Personally, I find MyBlogLog and Explode to be quite basic and uncompelling. The biggest hurdle to their success is the fact that they have to get website/blog owners to participate. In my opinion, this will probably always limit their growth and I would be surprised to see any service with this type of hurdle really breaking out into the mainstream unless there’s a greater value proposition for participating.
Josh: I don’t know what the Yahoo management is thinking anymore, but shareholders should be thinking “Damn. We just paid $10 million for a simple service with no defensible technology and limited traction.”
I like the site, has potential indeed.. layout could be improved a bit..though
I don’t get widgets. Why do you want something on your site that everyone else can have? When I visit a site with things like MyBlogLog or Snaps I just think oh another site with the same stuff. I much prefer sites with original content.
To answer some of the points brought up in the article and comments:
The ability to add friends on the site will magically appear today. We were going to do it yesterday but ran out of time - this is moving a lot faster than we expected it to.
Personally, I find MyBlogLog and Explode to be quite basic and uncompelling. The biggest hurdle to their success is the fact that they have to get website/blog owners to participate. In my opinion, this will probably always limit their growth and I would be surprised to see any service with this type of hurdle really breaking out into the mainstream unless there’s a greater value proposition for participating.
We’ve made it a lot easier to participate. You don’t need to slap a Javascript widget on your site; all it takes is a graphic, which you can stick in a blog post (if you’ve ever read a Livejournal post or been to Myspace, you’ll know this isn’t much of a barrier). We’re going to be adding the ability to let people choose the graphics and share them with others; for example, serious bloggers might be allergic to the badge we have at the moment, so we’ll design up a smaller, smarter alternative.
As for the logo, here’s a suitably web 2.0 alternative
(PS: one note - the link to Elgg in the article should point to Elgg.org rather than Explode, and I’d like to rather cheekily ask anyone interested in building a social networking service to check it out. It’s completely free.)
Just to put it into mainstream context - have a look at Slide.com’s guestbook widget - with slide’s reach on myspace, bebo, facebook etc - is that the mainstream distributed social network starting up?
I’d like to see people use their real names, make the system less juvenile. Also, real names provide more transparency. If someone wants to remain anonymous, wants to be a lurker, they can: They don’t have to sign up for MyBlogLog.
It would be interesting to see how many people would be willing to give this a shot instead of MyBlogLog. There is something to be said about inertia, even these days.
Alex
Drama 2.0: “The biggest hurdle to their success is the fact that they have to get website/blog owners to participate.”
I think the good thing about Explode! is exactly that you don’t need to “participate” in a community - it is just a service that allows you to connect to your friends and contacts across different sites and each and everyone can choose their own profile-page, be it a blog, homepage, MySpace-profile or whatever. In turn then, I don’t need to subscribe to all kinds of different services to stay connected to different people and have the relations to them be visible to others.
Horrible logo.
I doubt a lot of MyBlogLog bloggers will take the time to switch unless there’s something truly extraordinary that differentiates this new service (which doesn’t seem to be the case) - especially with the number of people using MBL. It’s the same reason MySpace still dominates - they were the first one to reach significant critical mass and people have to be on there because everyone else already is.
MBL has been very responsive to plugging up security holes and they are backed by Y!’s infrastructure. MBL gained a lot of traction in this space being the first mover. It’s nice to see a competitor in the space though - at least it drives innovation and progress.
We’re not trying to solve the same problem as MyBlogLog, and as the week carries on you’ll start seeing features that really differentiates Explode.
I’ve got an alternative, web 2.0 compliant logo in a comment above that appears to be stuck in moderation hell. Suffice to say it has shadows and everything; it has been suggested that I stick “beta post-stealth mode proof of concept” on the end, but I’m resisting.
this sounds like a cool idea actually!
Too bad their logo is hideous.
Marshall, I already pinged you about this but I’d suggest checking out http://www.milliondollaravatar.com which launched at midnight this AM.
The tagline is “get hits or die tryin” - and basically that sums up the goal of MDA. It’s an avatar based social networking community created to help people find new sites and promote their own.
Read the blog, About us, and FAQ for more details. It’s kinda/sorta like mybloglog but with a twist - more focused on helping people find new sites. Check it out.
I really like it. I find it easy to use and very addictive - plus from the message boards I gather you will be able to see user activity by groups of friends (ie ‘work’ or ‘football’ or ‘drama group’) which would be really really ace.
Plus, y’know, British! Huzzah!
Hey, Arrington’s dog is a very handsome hound!
Explode doesn’t have the spam problems of MBL because it was *virtually unknown* (until now). Unless Explode’s features are dramatically better I need to stick to the one I know and the one almost everybody else is using.
Not another social networking site, Please!
visit http://www.techcrunchme.com
MyBlogLog has an image-only widget available as well. You have to temporarily change your doman to .wordpress.com or myspace.com to get the code though.
more info:
http://engtech.wordpress.com/2.....available/
Looks like Jason Kottke’s http://www.kottke.org/04/01/metaster “meta-ster” joke, made real. Well, as “real” as web 2.0 gets, anyway…
Hooray for OpenID support.
Social Networking powers the Web2.0… yet another one in the series…
These widgets are awesome, a new form of viral marketing, that will end up being useful (Web 3.0) to users. MyBlogLog took off in spite of privacy issues; I guess human nature’s voyeurism … is a stronger behavior, for some. I love seeing these pics of real people stopping by versus a referrer server log. Some of these social search and social networking widgets do inform on context, ad value to content, relevance, credibility, and eventually will be extracting more data not perceivable when looking at one piece of content in a vacuum. Distributed widgets could connect dots and create value. To paraphrase Microsoft’s Naam it’s like every human being is a neuron, and humanity as a whole is one giant brain, smarter as a connected whole. If you can increase the ability of humans to communicate with each other, you make the whole planet smarter. Even though most probably more widgets will surface and go forgotten, there is a shift taking place from few with the power to users getting empowered, from a “few-to-many” to “many-to-many” publishing models with exploding consumer generate media., making the Web more transparent, more fluid.
-arnaud
Search is the Internet OS!
FWIW , FindMeOn.com has had many of those services available since October.