Ok maybe not the worst, that award would have to go to Myspace, unless of course you’re a 15 year old girl.
First let me say, I love Mybloglog.com, it’s my kind of social network.
But the problem I have is not that it’s been bought by Yahoo, which will hardly effect me and yes I know everyone is getting excited and sweaty about it, but from my point of view I can’t see the big deal.
No, the problem is is that it is too good, it’s too easy to add contacts, I joined a few days ago and had a couple of hours free so added a few hundred contacts. All within my sector of web development. I notice that I had more contacts than Shoemoney so was feeling pretty good about myself and thought I would brag about this in the webmaster.fm chat room.
I was then informed that when I can get over 7,000 contacts in 24 hours, then I can brag, actually they were a lot nicer but it’s more interesting if I spice it up.
It was then explained to me that bots are now being built to game Mybloglog.com
It would be quite easy to track the pages that have Mybloglog code on them and record who visits, this is useful data as you can then set up an account to target people who visit one type of website.
Your account then links to a nice Splog you have just set up.
Most people you contact visit your website to see what you’re about. So, add 7,000 people, get 7,000 people visiting your site and make a few dollars.
When people place the Mybloglog code on their website as I have done here, the picture of Mybloglog members who were the last to visit is displayed. So to get your face, or picture to display is visit the blog.
So what’s to stop someone to set up a script that will visit the site every 15 mins – or higher for more trafficked sites – and get their picture in front of as many eyeballs as possible. Yes there is a function where you can ban people being displayed, but how do you know if it’s real or not?
On a members page is a list of all the communities they belong to, again this data can be gathered and members targeted. The pages on these communities have lists of all the members, so again another place where data on communities can be gathered.
Messages can be posted on a members account page, so once you have a targeted list of people and a nice splog set up, a bot could send mass messages to members based on their interests. Not of the “check out my free ringtone” variety that you get on Myspace, but a more cleverly crafted message that appeals to the vanity of the member. I am sure I have already had some spam as the messages praise me for things I have not yet done.
You could set up a bot which monitors a community and when a new member is added an automatic “add contact” goes out.
So yeah, brilliant idea for a social network, but how are they going to stop the spammer and bot action?
What people have to say about myblog from around the web.
Shoemoneys’ predictions correct
Why Yahoo Needs MyBlogLog, and Vice Versa
The MyBlogLog Blog
Bloggers unite! Yahoo! joins forces with MyBlogLog
MyBlogLog has finally been acquired by Yahoo!
Yahoo Buys Networking Site For Blog Junkies
What does Yahoo want with MyBlogLog?
Om Malik on the sale to Yahoo
Mashable talks about the Yahoo sale