Improving Online Communities: MyBlogLog, Explode, OthersOnline
Online community, or for that matter any community, is built upon the shared experiences of its participants. In the real world, people in a community typically interact with each other by gathering at same physical location, at the same time. In online communities, it is easy for users to interact with each other without any geographical or temporal limitations. But in return for the benefits that the Internet (or even the telephone to a lesser degree) provides in terms of ease of communication, there is less richness, texture and context in the conversations. A number of startups are trying to address this problem with online communities and in this post we review some of them.
MyBlogLog
MyBlogLog started off with the aim of providing blog
analytics. MyBlogLog Communities was launched mid last year, to enable readers of blogs
to join communities and share their experiences with other like-minded groups of readers.
The idea was that if readers like the same content, they probably have plenty else in
common. MyBlogLog built a platform where readers could trade messages with others and see
what other sites they visit.
Power of Images
MyBlogLog hit the jackpot with the 'Recent Readers' facewalls, which provided a visual way to connect readers and writers of blogs. By just giving a static visual cue in the form of a picture, MyBlogLog provided an important visual context for online community conversations. The result: MyBlogLog's usage took off and is now at over 50K users. In the meantime, they also got acquired by Yahoo! for about $10M.
Where there are visitors, there is spam
With all the success of MyBlogLog, came a number of people looking to use it for financial gains. From R-Rated avatars, to people pretending to be somebody else, to other commercial avatars like Mr. Online Pharmacy, there have been a number of instances of people trying to game MyBlogLog. And MyBlogLog has struggled to cope with it.
Competition
In addition to the spammers, there is new competition on the horizon for MyBlogLog. OthersOnline and Explode are two emerging players that have interesting new twists to the functionality provided by MyBlogLog. Let’s take a quick look at each...
Explode
Explode provides the same
analytics capability as MyBlogLog, but in addition to Analytics it also allows users to
build a network for friends - who can be readers or writers of blogs. Bloggers can then
display a 'friends' widget on their blogs. This widget provides valuable context on the
readers of the blog and the blogger's circle of friends. Another capability that Explode
provides is a comment wall
for each user, where friends and other users can post comments. This also provides
valuable context on each of the users.
OthersOnline
OthersOnline has an
interesting twist on the idea of providing context. They allow people to register their
profile along with their website. As part of the registration process, OthersOnline asks
users to categorize their website and themselves, via keywords. Using these keywords,
OthersOnline shows profile information of users, along with presence and email, via a
browser plug-in (a widget is in the works as well). The idea is to make it easy for
people to locate other like minded individuals or websites, in the course of
browsing.
Conclusion
While these companies are breaking new ground in making online conversations more useful, there is still a long way to go before we have achieved a 'good enough' quality of online interactions. What do you think of MyBlogLog and/or the others mentioned here? Have they improved your online communities?
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Jitendra - I look forward to more coverage on this, MyBlogLog certainly needs some friendly competition. I notice you don't use any of these services on your own blog - care to share some opinions?
I used OO and found it rather pointless. No offense but I just didn't receive any value from it + back then it was IE only.
MyBlogLog, however, is a very useful service and I've actually met some cool people from there, invested in one company based on a contact there, and found some excellent blogs. The issue is that as it grows rapidly these events are hard to extract from the noise and spam. Good but another iteration is needed.
N.Cauldwell - They do. Check the lower right hand corner.
I think the sites should have different categories of users. This will make it less likely for a user to be offended by an Avatar or someone selling their wares. They should also allow multiple category users.
Adrian - Jitendra has his own blog, and on which he doesn't use MyBlogLog.
Look - http://www.readwriteweb.com/about_jitendra.php
This is a very informative site .
Please carry on the good work .
Warm regards ,
http://blogs.mindbodynsoul.com
This is a very informative site .
Carry on the good work .
Warm regards ,
http://blogs.mindbodynsoul.com
Haven't found any value in MyBlogLog yet, but the effort to join was minimal and for those using real names that I could correlate to comments, I've enjoyed seeing the photos.
The "A VC" blog does a great job by placing MyBlogLog photos next to comments: I'd recommend this for R/WW.
Niel, I need to move my blog to a self hosted server so that I can add MyBlogLog widget to it. Right now its hosted on WP which does not allow adding an outside widget like MyBlogLog.
-Jitendra
We use Post282 (http://www.post282.com).. It's got all the nice features - chatting, image-sharing, video posting etc, etc.. And the thing about it is that all the communities are private and managed by their users
Neil...Apologize for the misspelled name in the last post. I guess I was too eager to pull the trigger. :-)
Jitendra
We're going to be relaunching Explode soon with some excellent new features. However, even right now, it's worth noting that it's got OpenID for everyone, "nudges" - emailed comments shared between your mutual friends, which have proven to be very sticky - and a basic search engine, allowing you to find people on various networks.
Hi. Jordan from Others Online here. Thx for the post, and for the above comments. You’re right about our goal — to provide the value of shared interests/experiences across a user’s online experience. We use tags/keywords, which can describe a meme, Web site community (readwriteweb), cause (biodiesel), hobby, person, event (SXSW), whatever.
When we actually launch in Q2, our initial focus will be on increasing users' visibility, blog traffic, etc. on a very targeted basis (using those tags). You know how companies buy keyword-based advertising to reach people contextually? Well, think of us as "peer-to-peer targeted promotion" for individuals — you tag yourself and we drive relevant traffic to you. The more you use OO the more you increase traffic to your site.
Mark, I can totally see your point of view, and no offense taken. You signed up the first day we went public with our alpha! We were a concept, not a product, and didn't deliver on the value prop. We're still not, to be honest with you. We’re prelaunch and still putting a number of the critical pieces in place. The widget (in beta test today) is one of them. We also have Firefox now (in beta). Soon we'll start testing the system with real users, and be able to consistently demonstrate value (and a point to all this).
For those interested in the widget, you can see it at http://blog.othersonline.com.
Yes, I've used both MyBlogLog and Explode! and have met a lot of other nice bloggers thru them.
Some of whom have become regular readers of my blog, and I of theirs.
Hi,
I'm a regular reader of the tech blogs and was wondering if I can get to read about online user security systems. I mean regarding the phishing,man in the middle attacks and passwords hacking in banking sectors and other places where authentication plays a critical role. I'm also doing a research on the same so wanted to hear about it at places like read/write web.
Regards,
Sebasatian