MyBlogLog Battles - MyBlogSlog?

Erk. Two heavy hitters are in the process of duking it out. Over at his blog Jeremy Zawodny takes a pop at Andy Beal for 'spamming' MyBlogLog.


I don't blame Zawodny for making the comment. I can see why Andy is furious though.

Why has Jeremy made this claim? He's a loyal Yahoo and a savvy guy. He's seen another savvy marketer use MyBlogLog's features to broadcast a commercial message. This is likely to be something that Eric Marcoullier and his team may not have intended their system to be used for.

Is it spam? It is an image that doesn't look like Marking Pilgrim. This is true. Is the chance to win a Zune representative of Marking Pilgrim? Gosh. I guess that's for Andy Beal to decide. He's certainly not the only savvy marketer to change their MyBlogLog picture.


SEO by the Sea isn't spamming. Bill Slawski is easily smart enough to know that that beautiful picture is going to attract more attention on MyBlogLog than all the other SEO blogs out there. Bill's still playing by the rules.

As a tangent I have to admit how SEO By the Sea has blasted on to my radar. I found it via Search Engine Land, commented at the time that I didn't read it - now I certainly do. Bill Slawski writes to an audience of intelligent optimisers. Too many SEO blogs write to an audience of rookie webmasters learning about SEM.

What we have here, with Beal and Zawodny, is a clash of netiquette. The manners expected from MyBlogLog users aren't yet clear. We don't yet have the ground rules.

You might say that you don't want to look at a Zune competition graphic on MyBlogLog but - c'mon - I don't want to look at the ugly mugs throughout most of MyBlogLog! My ugly mug included! Haha. On the other hand, imagine if every other community image on MBL was a commercial lure?

The debate (despite Andy's anger and Jeremy's annoyance) is good. We're having the conversation. We're thrashing out the ground rules in a new area. That's always needed.

I have to say that I'm impressed with MyBlogLog. This blog sat in "parked" for over a year. I've been active in the social media scene with this blog for just a month, am making progress and much of this is due to MyBlogLog. MyBlogLog drives a significant chunk of ARHG's traffic right now. Further to this you can see just how quickly and how well Eric and co respond to the blogosphere. Despite Yahoo making them a bit richer I can see that MBL senior management are still here for us. They're still hands on.

Eric will need to be hands on for a while longer. This won't be the only MyBlogSlog we see this year.

(The I support nofollow campaign reaches day 5 with 1 'heroic' supporter.)

Comments

Anonymous said…
Thanks, Andrew.

I chose that picture because it's a favorite, and fit with the tone that I'm trying to set with my site. And it looked good as a thumbnail. :)

Appreciate your kind words about SEO by the Sea.

Cheers.

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