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MyBlogLog Getting Into Identity Management

Posted by Nick O'Neill on February 17th, 2008 1:15 AM

Last night Ian Kennedy of MyBlogLog sent out an email to users notifying them of new features coming to their website. This tool will automatically aggregate all of your publicly available information on sites such as Last.fm, Twitter, Del.icio.us, Digg, Flickr, YouTube and other sites. I think MyBlogLog may be stepping up their activity due to an unforeseen threat: Facebook. Although it hasn’t been created yet, someone is bound to launch a MyBlogLog competitor in the coming weeks. Given that Facebook has an even larger user base, MyBlogLog is seriously threatened.

The race is no longer to get users to choose your website as a primary location but instead to have a central location of identity. Even Google has joined the race with the launch of their Social Graph API. The exploration of the implications of managing individuals’ social graphs have only begun but the race to own it is in full swing. We will see once lucrative companies collapse as the battle rages on. In the past 9 months we have only seen the beginning.

MyBlogLog is clearly one of the threatened entities. Honestly, I’m amazed that it has taken this long for them to realize that their company is in the business of identity management. Even still, MyBlogLog risks some backlash as Leslie Bradshaw points out. When launched, the “New with Me” feature will be opt-out instead of opt-in. Creating a feature as opt-out is a no-no in the web world and is seems that MyBlogLog may not have learned from the Facebook Beacon fiasco. I have a feeling that they may learn their lesson soon!

Do you think MyBlogLog should change this new feature to opt-in?

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This entry was posted on Sunday, February 17th, 2008 at 1:15 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 3 Comments

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    Nick -- Interesting stuff. I find it very interesting how these decisions are made... I would like to picture a bunch of expert/economists/social scientists/marketers/etc. + the ACTUAL USERS debating the merits of opt-in and opt-out... with decisions being based on part anecdotal/qualitative stories + hard data (X users flipped out on X number of web platforms after the Beacon "fiasco" as you called it; the economic benefit of tapping into API data results in $X for us, etc.)

    Thanks again for keeping the dialog open. -L.
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    Hi Nick,

    We debated the various merits of opt-in and opt-out but finally decided on opt-out because of the unique nature of MyBlogLog. Most of the activity on MyBlogLog happens in the widgets, a small percentage of users make it back to the site. If we chose to go with an opt-in, it would take a long time for people to catch on and the real value of New with Me comes from a critical mass of users adopting it.

    We looked closely at the Facebook Beacon reaction and felt the biggest issue was lack of control. The opt-out pop-up disappeared too quickly and there was, initially, no means to opt-out on the site itself. We took these lessons to heart and have built in controls which a user can use to quickly opt-out and control what they share. By sending the email blast, posting it on our blog, and coverage and discussion from folks like yourself, we hope that we can arrive at a solution that doesn't take anyone by surprise.

    Ian Kennedy
    Product Manager, MyBlogLog
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    Well mybloglog seems to have disappeared from LOTS of sites, so I wonder what their reach is like.

    Also how hard would it be for someone to create an fb app, set people's cookies, then tie it into mybloglog or a clone?

    I'd find real profiles (not the spam i've seen in MBL) of people I know more appealing.

    This is more of a play for Attention profile data, and thats the key for yahoo having bought them.

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