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EVERYTIME, they've come up with a *solution that creates more trouble*. I read on their blog that everybody should leave the community who sends spam to them. WTH?! And who'll care about the time that we spend in visiting a blog and joining its community?
They say that managing 918 communities is just too much for a single person. I say that I can manage reading 5000+ blogs in a week and I know too many others who track much more blogs than I do.
IMO, they've built a pretty strong medium to promote spam over at MyBlogLog without providing us MBL members any single option to block the messages before they reach our profile pages.
MBL is the first company that's pissing me off everytime it releases a new feature.
EVERYTIME, they've come up with a *solution that creates more trouble*. I read on their blog that everybody should leave the community who sends spam to them. WTH?! And who'll care about the time that we spend in visiting a blog and joining its community?
They say that managing 918 communities is just too much for a single person. I say that I can manage reading 5000+ blogs in a week and I know too many others who track much more blogs than I do.
IMO, they've built a pretty strong medium to promote spam over at MyBlogLog without providing us MBL members any single option to block the messages before they reach our profile pages.
MBL is the first company that's pissing me off everytime it releases a new feature.
These guys obviously never used myspace and orkut and whatnot...
These guys obviously never used myspace and orkut and whatnot...
There isn't an amount of traffic or interactivity or community that is worth being spammed, not to me. I know I could just change to an email that I don't use but that's beside the point. Blah.
There isn't an amount of traffic or interactivity or community that is worth being spammed, not to me. I know I could just change to an email that I don't use but that's beside the point. Blah.
Does that mean what I think it means?
Yikes.
I haven't received any untoward mass mailings yet, but it was sure thoughtful of MyBlogLog to add me to someone's potential spam list without my knowledge or consent.
Does that mean what I think it means?
Yikes.
I haven't received any untoward mass mailings yet, but it was sure thoughtful of MyBlogLog to add me to someone's potential spam list without my knowledge or consent.
The 301 redirect that can be made from Blogspot would be followed by the feedreaders, so they will go to
http://www.destyonline.com/whteverURLblogspotus...
They will currently get a 401 error that it doesn't exist
Blogspot probably creates 2 or 3 different feeds, so you would see 2 or 3 error messages in your stats
All you need to do is set up a 301 redirect in your .htaccess file from those old feeds to your new one.
You then use the Feedsmith plugin to ensure that all feeds redirect to a Feedburner account, and you then have accurate feed stats for all the different feed requests.
The 301 redirect that can be made from Blogspot would be followed by the feedreaders, so they will go to
http://www.destyonline.com/whteverURLblogspotus...
They will currently get a 401 error that it doesn't exist
Blogspot probably creates 2 or 3 different feeds, so you would see 2 or 3 error messages in your stats
All you need to do is set up a 301 redirect in your .htaccess file from those old feeds to your new one.
You then use the Feedsmith plugin to ensure that all feeds redirect to a Feedburner account, and you then have accurate feed stats for all the different feed requests.
actually DO NOT CHECK IT
DO NOT CLICK IT !
DO NOT CLICK IT !
Ok. if you want to crash your browser, go on , check it. I'll leave the link just at the end of my comment, so you can crash your browser just after I finish my comment. :-)
Seriously..that's one of those page you should insert in the Guinness book of records.
Eric Contacts
I agree with the warning, I didn't wait for the full page to load, and I have a 7Mbps connection
actually DO NOT CHECK IT
DO NOT CLICK IT !
DO NOT CLICK IT !
Ok. if you want to crash your browser, go on , check it. I'll leave the link just at the end of my comment, so you can crash your browser just after I finish my comment. :-)
Seriously..that's one of those page you should insert in the Guinness book of records.
Eric Contacts
I agree with the warning, I didn't wait for the full page to load, and I have a 7Mbps connection
I am not sure if you could do that with .htaccess on blogspot hosted blog.
my 2 cents.
I am not sure if you could do that with .htaccess on blogspot hosted blog.
my 2 cents.
What you then have to do is redirect that traffic coming to a page that doesn't exist to a page that does.
What you then have to do is redirect that traffic coming to a page that doesn't exist to a page that does.
Thanks for the feedback. Meg had suggested an 'opt out of mass messages', so I'm sure we'll discuss it on Monday. We'll also talk about the tags that you mentioned.
When we changed the layout of the community page, it really was intended to drive conversation and traffic back you the community owner's blog. If the tags are not doing that, we need to put our heads together.
As far as the suggestion board goes, when I note in the backend that I've seen the message, it disappears from the queue. I certainly could stop noting that so that all of the messages stay, but at what point *should* they disappear? I'd love your feedback on this as we want this to be as useful as possible for all of you and for us. Thanks, great post as usual.
Most of this post was written before you had even mentioned the messaging system on the blog.
The moment I received a first message from Jonathan at smartwealthyrich.com I knew this was going to be a problem.
That was just after 6pm PST yesterday.
Tags need to point to content that is related which in turn point back to related profiles and blogs.
I am not going to suggest you have to have followable external links from all the tag pages - Bumpzee does, Blogcatalog doesn't but it would be good to have interrelated tagging all over the place.
An alternative would be to have a Megite like aggregator for a tag.
It is important to think that a blog could have 1000s of tags, and have only mentioned a topic once.
You should be aggregating tags looking to have a weighted tag cloud for each blog in the future.
Whether you have all the tag links indexed is a complicated issue, I write a lot about the SEO ways to use tagging, but it can be equally argued that it shouldn't be indexed.
I wouldn't might some tag based feeds as well as I would like some way to grab a little content legally to make my tag pages more useful.
I have written so many suggestions in the past, but not knowing what is coming down the track now 6 months after I suggested them, it is hard to even consider using the suggest board.
Start at the beginning and work your way forward.
http://andybeard.eu/tag/mybloglog/page/4
The content is paged for now, but that will change in the future - supplemental results = lack of pagerank
I just visited suggest and Yahoo Pipes.
I made a suggestion there a while back, but there is no "my suggestions" feature to allow me to track, and the suggestion seems to have disappeared totally because you can no longer even find it on a search.
Most of my "suggestions" are fairly geeky and your mass audience is either
1. Not understand what I write, so not vote on it
2. Vote for it just because it sounds good, even though they don't understand what I am writing.
Yahoo suggest doesn't have the kind of interface suitable for a 3000 word post with 5 to 10 pictures to try to explain anything.
The good news is that my "situation" with Blogcatalog doesn't prevent me offering some advice though things in email stay private, as they have done with MBL in the past.
I would however have to avoid discussing anything feature related in email as I notified Eric about a while back.
The good news is I have only left 4 communities so far due to this, so an early post was pre-emptive.
Thanks for the feedback. Meg had suggested an 'opt out of mass messages', so I'm sure we'll discuss it on Monday. We'll also talk about the tags that you mentioned.
When we changed the layout of the community page, it really was intended to drive conversation and traffic back you the community owner's blog. If the tags are not doing that, we need to put our heads together.
As far as the suggestion board goes, when I note in the backend that I've seen the message, it disappears from the queue. I certainly could stop noting that so that all of the messages stay, but at what point *should* they disappear? I'd love your feedback on this as we want this to be as useful as possible for all of you and for us. Thanks, great post as usual.
Most of this post was written before you had even mentioned the messaging system on the blog.
The moment I received a first message from Jonathan at smartwealthyrich.com I knew this was going to be a problem.
That was just after 6pm PST yesterday.
Tags need to point to content that is related which in turn point back to related profiles and blogs.
I am not going to suggest you have to have followable external links from all the tag pages - Bumpzee does, Blogcatalog doesn't but it would be good to have interrelated tagging all over the place.
An alternative would be to have a Megite like aggregator for a tag.
It is important to think that a blog could have 1000s of tags, and have only mentioned a topic once.
You should be aggregating tags looking to have a weighted tag cloud for each blog in the future.
Whether you have all the tag links indexed is a complicated issue, I write a lot about the SEO ways to use tagging, but it can be equally argued that it shouldn't be indexed.
I wouldn't might some tag based feeds as well as I would like some way to grab a little content legally to make my tag pages more useful.
I have written so many suggestions in the past, but not knowing what is coming down the track now 6 months after I suggested them, it is hard to even consider using the suggest board.
Start at the beginning and work your way forward.
http://andybeard.eu/tag/mybloglog/page/4
The content is paged for now, but that will change in the future - supplemental results = lack of pagerank
I just visited suggest and Yahoo Pipes.
I made a suggestion there a while back, but there is no "my suggestions" feature to allow me to track, and the suggestion seems to have disappeared totally because you can no longer even find it on a search.
Most of my "suggestions" are fairly geeky and your mass audience is either
1. Not understand what I write, so not vote on it
2. Vote for it just because it sounds good, even though they don't understand what I am writing.
Yahoo suggest doesn't have the kind of interface suitable for a 3000 word post with 5 to 10 pictures to try to explain anything.
The good news is that my "situation" with Blogcatalog doesn't prevent me offering some advice though things in email stay private, as they have done with MBL in the past.
I would however have to avoid discussing anything feature related in email as I notified Eric about a while back.
The good news is I have only left 4 communities so far due to this, so an early post was pre-emptive.
My first tip off about this situation was when I realised how many emails I was receiving. I actually came here to see if you'd posted anything about the new system, because I was pretty peeved. You hadn't at that stage, so I went to the MyBlogLog blog and read the post about it. I then wrote my own post and the linked it back in the URL on my comment on the MBL post. I know Robyn looks out for this kind of feedback as she's commented on my blog before.
An hour or so later I saw your post come through on the feed reader. You're quite right in saying that we often have a similar point of view - you just say it much more eloquently! But an opt out function seems to be the obvious solution to keep everyone happy.
My first tip off about this situation was when I realised how many emails I was receiving. I actually came here to see if you'd posted anything about the new system, because I was pretty peeved. You hadn't at that stage, so I went to the MyBlogLog blog and read the post about it. I then wrote my own post and the linked it back in the URL on my comment on the MBL post. I know Robyn looks out for this kind of feedback as she's commented on my blog before.
An hour or so later I saw your post come through on the feed reader. You're quite right in saying that we often have a similar point of view - you just say it much more eloquently! But an opt out function seems to be the obvious solution to keep everyone happy.
I've never liked MBL, but I hesitated in signing up for BlogCatalog because I feared I was being redundant. Boy am I glad I did. The community and features overall just seems leaps and bounds better than MyBlogLog, and it's proven to be far far more helpful in helping me find likeminded bloggers.
I could fix it, or maybe there is a fix, but I have been a little to busy to upgrade lots of things.
Some aspects of Blogcatalog are great - in some ways I am in split minds over the success of the forums because I would love people to be spending more time on each other's blogs, and I fear some people spend too much time on the discussion forum.
Forums are a great way of promoting your content, though if you have a blog about keeping goldfish, you might be better off promoting your blog on a forum about keeping goldfish.
I've never liked MBL, but I hesitated in signing up for BlogCatalog because I feared I was being redundant. Boy am I glad I did. The community and features overall just seems leaps and bounds better than MyBlogLog, and it's proven to be far far more helpful in helping me find likeminded bloggers.
I could fix it, or maybe there is a fix, but I have been a little to busy to upgrade lots of things.
Some aspects of Blogcatalog are great - in some ways I am in split minds over the success of the forums because I would love people to be spending more time on each other's blogs, and I fear some people spend too much time on the discussion forum.
Forums are a great way of promoting your content, though if you have a blog about keeping goldfish, you might be better off promoting your blog on a forum about keeping goldfish.
I appreciate your blog by the way. Lots of helpful advice about marketing, and you're not afraid to be blunt about it either. :)
I blog about similar topics to many people, but generally I try to think about something enough to have a constructive opinion whether I am paid for it or not.
My readers still have to determine whether what I write is unbiased, but I help them in making that opinion with disclosure.
I know in this niche most of the popular blogs currently write articles without a strong opinion, for me the articles are "grey".
It is possible to cover all the angles, for and against, and give a final opinion, but many avoid doing so.
Lots of people also complain about the length of my articles, but that again means that I am targeting a totally different niche.
I write the type of content I would like to read, and the blogs I am most active on write a similar type of content.
I appreciate your blog by the way. Lots of helpful advice about marketing, and you're not afraid to be blunt about it either. :)
I blog about similar topics to many people, but generally I try to think about something enough to have a constructive opinion whether I am paid for it or not.
My readers still have to determine whether what I write is unbiased, but I help them in making that opinion with disclosure.
I know in this niche most of the popular blogs currently write articles without a strong opinion, for me the articles are "grey".
It is possible to cover all the angles, for and against, and give a final opinion, but many avoid doing so.
Lots of people also complain about the length of my articles, but that again means that I am targeting a totally different niche.
I write the type of content I would like to read, and the blogs I am most active on write a similar type of content.
I'm looking forward to exploring more of your site - this is my first visit. It's been useful so far! Thanks!
I'm looking forward to exploring more of your site - this is my first visit. It's been useful so far! Thanks!
Snoskred
p.s. it is much easier to use trackback than running around commenting on blogs you have linked to.
I said my piece, though due to my relationship with Blogcatalog, I don't think it would be appropriate to go on a negative publicity campaign against a feature I expect to be dead and buried, or heavily modified in a couple of days.
I have left 5 or 6 communities so far, though it is most likely I will end up autojoined to them again.
Snoskred
p.s. it is much easier to use trackback than running around commenting on blogs you have linked to.
I said my piece, though due to my relationship with Blogcatalog, I don't think it would be appropriate to go on a negative publicity campaign against a feature I expect to be dead and buried, or heavily modified in a couple of days.
I have left 5 or 6 communities so far, though it is most likely I will end up autojoined to them again.
I do agree with you about the community messaging. I can see it's purpose if it was used for said purpose but people being people, it won't be long before it's massively abused. Too bad.
I did use it once myself just to thank the members of my community for joining and stopping by the blog which is the kind of thing that it is supposed to be used for of course. And that's the last time I'll ever use it until they offer up an option to opt out and if they were smart about it, add on the options of "reply", "report", "spam", "delete", to each received community messages as they already have on individual messages.
Of course, after I sent that "Thank you", someone dropped out of my community and then I read your post(good one by the way). Figures.
I do agree with you about the community messaging. I can see it's purpose if it was used for said purpose but people being people, it won't be long before it's massively abused. Too bad.
I did use it once myself just to thank the members of my community for joining and stopping by the blog which is the kind of thing that it is supposed to be used for of course. And that's the last time I'll ever use it until they offer up an option to opt out and if they were smart about it, add on the options of "reply", "report", "spam", "delete", to each received community messages as they already have on individual messages.
Of course, after I sent that "Thank you", someone dropped out of my community and then I read your post(good one by the way). Figures.
I've seen it at other blogs as well...
Sephyroth
http://www.sephyroth.net
I've seen it at other blogs as well...
Sephyroth
http://www.sephyroth.net
Thanks for going into more depth about how to use MyBlogLog. This is helpful, because I was barely using it before for messages and certainly not for tags. Thanks for taking the time to explain.
Chris
Thanks for going into more depth about how to use MyBlogLog. This is helpful, because I was barely using it before for messages and certainly not for tags. Thanks for taking the time to explain.
Chris
Just want to let you know that we added the ability to opt-out of Community Messaging email. For details on this check out the MyBlogLog blog:
http://mybloglogb.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/07...
Just want to let you know that we added the ability to opt-out of Community Messaging email. For details on this check out the MyBlogLog blog:
http://mybloglogb.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/07...
Blogcatalog's version (I assume you are only looking at the mass broadcast) was in development well before MyBlogLog launched their mass broadcast.
Sometimes people do think in similar directions, but with different implementations.
Blogcatalog's version (I assume you are only looking at the mass broadcast) was in development well before MyBlogLog launched their mass broadcast.
Sometimes people do think in similar directions, but with different implementations.