Yahoo! Will Kill MyBlogLog Next Month [Update]
Five years to the month after it was founded, cross-blog social networking widget MyBlogLog will be closed down by Yahoo! in January, we're hearing from sources close to the project. MyBlogLog is a service that shows blog writers and readers the faces and profile information of other MyBlogLog users that visit their sites.
In addition to showing the faces of recent blog visitors, MyBlogLog also offered programatic access to activity streams from social networks that users associated with their MyBlogLog accounts. For example, Yahoo's Kent Brewster, now at Netflix, built a bookmarklet that would display the recent bookmarks on Delicious, photos on Flickr and job titles from LinkedIn of the latest MyBlogLog users to visit any given blog.
Yahoo! has let the service atrophy for years and will now put it to rest. To think that this service offered publishers and developers access to personal, demographic, taste and activity data of a website's readers - and yet that offering has in the end gone no where - that's downright crazy.
Here at ReadWriteWeb we scraped a feed from our MyBlogLog page of the new users just added to our community, then reached out to thank them for their support and welcome them personally. That was just the beginning of what could have been a very valuable source of data. Imagine getting a feed of the LinkedIn job titles of all your recent readers and presenting that to a blog's advertisers. Both analytically and financially, there was so much potential in MyBlogLog. See our 2008 post The Significance of the MyBlogLog API if you're a social web geek and want to have your heart broken.
Looking at the ecosystems beginning to form around Twitter, Facebook and other user data - MyBlogLog may just have been ahead of its time. The service isn't alone among potentially world-changing technologies acquired and then starved of support at Yahoo! We've asked Yahoo! for comment and will update this post if we receive any.
Image via CrunchBase
"For any startup that has earn outs, and this didn't affect us, you've got to keep in mind that in 3 months you could be reorganized and the new guy could shut you down. The picture that gets painted early on when you have your product champions can change in a heartbeat and it's important for entreprenuers to consider that when looking at the deal terms."
R.I.P. MyBlogLog.
Update: Chris Yeh, head of the Yahoo! Developer Network, has responded over at the YDN blog: "Frankly, it's no secret within Yahoo! that we're actively discussing the future of MyBlogLog. However, it's also true that we have not made any final decisions at this point. Is a shutdown on the table? Sure, that's an option. But there are other options as well."
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wow - i remember using the service for a short bit - they had some decent analytics - i also ran the mbl widget on CN for the last year but removed it about 3 mos ago.
i wonder what will be left at yahoo. too bad they didn't want to listen to my ideas 18 mos ago - they would be in much better shape now.
Yep, tons of potential and then another dead end after the purchase by Yahoo! Ahead of its time but always on the fringe.
Well, wasted opportunities are Yahoo!'s MO.
This is really too bad. I still use MyBlogLog widget, I love to see the faces of the people reading my blog.
I wonder who will build something to replace this? Any ideas?
I guess I'll settle on my Disqus widget and Google Friend Connect widget, but those don't capture recent visitors.
Hmrf.
lets be serious, how many bells and whistles does the social web/media need?
most will be fads, just like this, with ugly design and a short life
investors pump money into these balloons which eventually burst
it is amazing half the crap, and i mean CRAP, that gets funded, only to eventually die.
Well pretty logical move. Peanut butter issue. The new Yahoo! Profile will replace MyBlogLog.
Marshall, Thank you for the kind words. As Eric noted, Bradley Horowitz was key to making us part of Y! and would have been key to getting us well integrated. We didn't report to him for long enough to make it work in the way we hoped.
The various MBL alumni are figuring out how to bring out helpful new publisher services. News on the first project that should see the light of day will appear @hearttheweb in January.
@ Dave Delaney
The best replacement I've seen so far is from some pals of mine in Amsterdam. It uses Twitter auth and images in a similar way to MBL.
http://twittercounter.com/pages/twitterwidget/
@jaredy at the risk of responding to that sort of comment, we were purely a bootstrap. MBL had no funding.
This is tragic, back until sometime ago I used to use MyBlogLog quite often, however the lack of development and no interest shown whatsover by Yahoo has killed this.
This is not the first time that Yahoo or any other biggies have taken over a perfectly good product and ruined it. It would definitely make me a bit sad if this is true.
Long live MyBlogLog
Oh No! I am sad. Back when MyBlogLog had started, I had written a blog post on how to take advantage of the MyBlogLog front page. For when it happened, way back in late 2006, this was cool.
http://cleverhack.com/2006/11/04/hacking-mybloglog/
Seriously, MBL was one of the first social Web applications for bloggers and I think an important one in terms of making bloggers and Web site publishers think of a "community" around their blogs/sites, etc.
@scott
so you guys made out very well, would anyone expect less from selling to yahoo
my main point is there are so many little apps, whether bootstrapped or properly funded, that are just not meant to last long, so lets stop making a big deal about them all
Wow. Spent quite a bit of time at the MyBlogLog site in 2007.
The service predated such social networking widgets as Google Friend Connect and Facebook Fan Boxes. Nice work strangling a pioneer into stagnation, Yahoo.
facebook's fan box is a pretty good replacement. http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Fan_Box
Yahoo has some of the most innovative services that SHOULD be laying the foundation of the company, rather than getting he hatchet. Do they not see the massive push Google is putting into Google Friend Connect which is a similar product to MyBlogLog? YQL and Pipes are two of the coolest things I've seen on the web, now how long before those two get axed as well? What about Delicious and Flickr? Are those going to get axed too?
I know what they need! A cycling team!
I hope the incredible work and innovation of their development / API team isn't wasted. I actually thought the new CEO was going to place the company on the right track, but it looks like her vision is stuck in the 90s.
damn shame. really is.
sigh.
its amusing watching everyone shriek in terror as these dead-end sites are shut off. today half the blogosphere is freaking out over this...yesterday you probably couldn't fill a bus with serious mbl users
whats amazing is that it was ever even acquired.
Feh! This is a not so surprising bummer. MBL should/could have been at the center of Y!'s social strategy. But they haven't even taken full advantage of flickr... or delicious, or upcoming, or... so what are you gonna do? Eric's comments are dead on.
It is very sad news for bloggers
well, it's really a shame since not only im plannign to use it on the 2 vertical portal we will be launching, most blogger community uses it.
I believe yahoo just had too many great sources and less inovative product managers to make all the thing works well together.
Compared to google, most yahoo services seems like they are separated and not integrated.
If yahoo indeed is moving toward asia as it's main base, they are definitely taking the wrong move shutting down MBL, selling it should be better.
Great way for Yahoo to start this New Year. MBL is the best thing to happen in social networking space and Y! did the best thing by taking them into its fold.
Sucks a nut...
http://designmylaptop.ro/inscrieri/022e4fbffba40d302f1b0225f1c9d611/
Mad as hell that this has happened. Saw it coming 6 months ago.
It was a very innovative thing back when it launched:
1.-First serious instant blog network
2.-First Widget to connect a network into your blog.
3.-Had a actual business plan before being bought.
But what happened is that yahoo stopped updating the widgets over a year ago. It never updated its stats package, It also stopped updating the design.
My problem with MyBlogLog is that it could had been
A)A better Technorati
B)A better wikio/blogged
C)Lijit before there was any lijit
D)OneRiot before there was any OneRiot.
E)Facebook Connect before there was any Facebook Connect.
Or even all of the above.
= A Complete Tragedy
One of the few instances lately where i agree with Marshall 100% and then some.
Let them introduce a Crunchbase kind of things and see how it works.
I'm lucky to have stopped using it a while back. The widget designs look bad that it would ruin my blog design. I know there could have been a way to tweak the widgets, but I didn't feel that it was worth putting too much effort into.
Well, this sucks..But not much can be done..MyBlogLog used to be great when it started, but of late it is mostly spammers there...Yahoo killed MBL the moment they bought it..
What's next? Delicious?
Ahead of it's time... That's exactly right.
owh no,that's a bad news !!!
I like my MBL because I've got many friends from that apps.
If Yahoo want to kill MBL,please replacing all of the MBL user to the replacement apps like that. And I think, there are no good apps such as MBL.
Mybloglog was indeed an innovative service and probably will be missed by the many bloggers still using it.
MBL was and still could be socially relevant IMHO. It's a real shame that they would choose to let it die instead of letting it go somewhere else. While I have to agree that there are a mash-up of similar services that can do what MBL does, it could probably re-emerge with the smallest face-life (read: Direction).
Not that I'm the paranoid sort, but I'm gonna verify all my Delicious tags are in Diigo, Digg my Buzz's, Pingg.com my Upcoming! and export all of my Yahoo Mail. Just to be safe.
Ok, TBO I'm only assuming I have a Yahoo Mail Account; my broadband isn't fast enough to avoid time-outs just pulling the spam folder. I just need to remember the email address, I think I wrote it down on my Geocities page.
This is really sad ... why .. I mean its such a great service . I have an account there .. I have my all blogs updated there ..I have reading about yahoo .. that it is going in loss .. and dnt know why .. Yahoo is almost providing all the services which are being provided by Google and Microsoft ..
Daina
Another sad news before 2009 ends. :-(
Yahoo is whacked. I have seen that company do some crazy things. You would think with all those resources and so called talent they would do something right what a bunch of Goofs.
Hi, all:
Why can't you just start the service somewhere else, like WordPress? Or set up your own network? Or get it on LinkedIn as an add-eon?
If YAHOO - which has killed more great ideas than Carter has made little liver pills - is going to shut it down, are you going to be able to keep the name?
NO, I DON'T know all the problems attendant to doing your own network, but if you don't try, you aren't going to do anything about it, either.
Missed opportunity. We tried and tried (and tried) to work with Y! to help extend and further the MBL asset. After all we include some of the MBL functionality when auto-discovering a network for your Lijit account. In the end the phrase "pecked to death by ducks" comes to mind...
We've since focused on more traditional methods to capture and include your network into your Lijit search results. Too bad the folks at Y! didn't take advantage of what should've been an easy way to further the technology without simply letting it die.
Yahoo also had a very nice movie making function and then closed it down. Seems like that is what they do, buy a nice add on to their site and then close it down. It is no wonder everyone talks about google. they are building and yahoo is shutting down.
Geocities then MyBlogLog. What's next?
Wow, carol 'loser' bartz is talking again, find out the reason why she is named like that and how she is leading the Y! corporartion to damnation. And now there's the Tiger..
Link:MyblogLog RIP is just Bartz own Demise
Saddest thing for me about all of this is that the world will never know just how close the MyBlogLog team came to shipping a genuinely useful Web identity, not tied to Yahoo or Facebook or anybody else. (Hint: it was really, really close. As in "ready to push.")
Ah, well. The MyBlogLog team has gone on to do great things post-MyBlogLog, like Mashery and Gnip. The Yahoo experience is a lot like going to college: what matters is what you do after you graduate.
MyBlogWho?
Oh it must have been that service that locked out anyone who didn't want to register a Yahoo account a couple years ago. I never went back and apparently Yahoo agrees that it wasn't worth the hassle requiring people to sign-up for a Yahoo account.
Another service will be created to fill the hole dug by Yahoo.
I hope Yahoo doesn't do the same with Delicious - It is my bookmarking site of choice. It already is kind a bummer that you have to register a yahoo email address to start a new Delicious account - just what I need, another email address.
Wouldn't it be cool if anti-monopoly laws / anti-racketering laws made it alot harder for big companies to buy tech start ups for the purpose of letting them wither / get 'em to shut down?
On the hand other wouldn't it be cool if someone bought Microsoft for the purpose of letting it wither / get 'em to shut down? Actually that kinda sounds alot like Microsoft's business plan these days anyways right?
Wont miss the social aspects, but will miss the real-time analytics.
Really very very sad. I have been using MyBlogLog for myself and all our clients.
I also, do not know what Yahoo is thinking!
It seems to me that Yahoo is experincing a real mid life crises: acting completely out of character, doing weird things, trying to change it's image. Meanwhile we are all powerless but to just watch, scratching our heads wondering where will it all end.
Feeling very dissapointed in Yahoo right now.
This is absolutely crazy! Another poor move that just proves that Yahoo! is on its way down completely.
According to Compete MyBlogLog as been significantly increasing visitors over the the past year and is the highest this past month it was ever at (1.5 million unique visitors!)
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/mybloglog.com/
It would have been a better move to sell them off at a loss than shut them down or just keep it active and earn passive revenue as 1.5 million visitors is not a low number...
This whole riled me up enough to do a good rant on it:
http://www.appatic.com/2009/12/mybloglog-perfect-example-of-missed.html
Shameless plug but totally relevant to this post.
Are we 100% sure that it will die?
Chris Yeh of the Yahoo Developer Network indicates there may be something different in store for MBL.
If they are gonna kill it...the least that they could do is hand it off to someone else. However, they would not be able to write it off then...would they?
A wasted opportunity.
This has been a long time coming, sadly. MyBlogLog will be missed.
That is shocking news to me and I do miss it very much
Well thats not a good decision by yahoo. I do like MyBlogLog a lot and would miss it.
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