Yahoo! Buys MyBlogLog
January 10th, 2007 by pamela
Following weeks of speculation Yahoo! has finally announced that it has agreed to buy MyBlogLog.
The two year old service allows users to create a profile, upload a picture and add your usernames from various other sites – in essence using MyBlogLog enables you to carry your profile around the web, building a social network as you go. The MyBlogLog communities service makes it easy for you to create an online community, and join the “community” of any other registered site.
According to the site, “MyBlogLog enables you to take advantage of your existing presence on the Web and ties it into communities of like-minded readers and authors to add context to the conversations in which you take part.” Anyone that reads a site or blog can learn about and engage with someone else, and become friends with other people who read their favorite blogs, learning more about people along the way.
Bradley Horowitz, vice president of product strategy at Yahoo, told Forbes.com “MyBlogLog will likely remain branded as a separate entity, but Yahoo users will be able to register on it with their Yahoo password. The reader communities will soon be able to access Yahoo services, like the Flickr photo site or the Yahoo Answers information service, to their groups.
“This closes the loop between readers and publishers,” he said. “Every publisher wants to know his readers, and the readers want to find out about each other. It’s the power of implicit networking.”
MyBlogLog currently has a reach of approximately 45,000 blogs, but sign up activity has picked up considerably in recent weeks. Horowitz admitted that he has, “..gigantic plans for this project. This is a playground where readers can talk to each other…think about community photos, community answers, Yahoo groups or meeting services.”
Search Engine Land has a great review of the service, showing how it allows you to easily let anyone join and see your “blog community.
Yahoo! continues to concentrate on social media and community initiatives, and given it’s recent success with social media sites such a Flickr and del.icio.us.
As a group, it is clear to see the value in these web communities as they offer Yahoo! a deeper understanding of online social communities and user activity that extend beyond the traditional boundaries of search and make future social media developments clearer.
Posted in Yahoo! |
