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I have written a previous post about MyBlogLog and what a huge fan I have become of the community. It has introduced me to a great many bloggers as well as introducing my blog to a whole new audience. I raised a question a while back about the difference between adding someone as a contact compared to them joining your community and vice versa. I felt like having to do both was overkill and the important thing was having users join your community and for myself to join communities that interested me.
If you are not familiar with MyBlogLog, anyone can add you as a contact. Once someone adds you as a contact, they are added as an admirer of yours and then you can choose to add them as one of your contacts or they just hang out as an admirer. When looking at some profiles, there are users that have 1000’s of contacts while having a very small community. Again, that makes little sense to me and what that says to me is that they just took some time and added as many people as they could to their contacts. I do not have the time nor inclination to do that and more importantly, I think by doing that just takes away from why the community was put together in the first place.
So since I had signed up at MyBlogLog, I was only adding contacts of users that had blogs that interested me. I was just not adding anyone who added me. It was nothing personal, I thought I was using MyBlogLog as it was meant to be used. Well, I got a private message a day or so ago from a user who had added me as a contact a while ago, but I hadn’t added them as a contact of mine. This person was not particularly happy with me not adding them and expressed it in the following message to me.
“I enjoy your blog and added you as my contact several weeks ago, but you still have not added me as a contact. Can I ask why? Is there something wrong with me that you don’t feel that I am worthy enough to be a contact of yours? I think you need to get off that high horse of yours!”
Wow! I didn’t realize this was so life or death. I had no idea that I had turned into a MyBlogLog Snob! After reading this message, I got glimmers of high school all over again wanting to sit at the cool kids table during lunch. What’s even more disturbing is if this person thinks I am hanging at the cool kids table, she is horribly mistaken. I am so far from the cool kids table, it’s silly. Anyhow, I debated on how to respond to this person. I started writing the following:
“I am sorry, I am so high up and you so don’t interest me, I did not hear a word that you said.”
Nah, that didn’t work, so I erased that and tried this:
“I am so sorry my dear, I was right in the middle of lighting a cigarette with a hundred dollar bill when I felt like I stepped on something. I turned my shoe over and low behold look what I found, but you.”
Cute, but no. After thinking about it for a minute, I concluded that life is just too short and I just went and added the person to my contacts. I am now not a MyBlogLog Snob and hopefully this person can sleep well tonight knowing she is now safely part of my contacts.
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Technorati Tags: MyBlogLog, MyBlogLog Snob
LOL - If this person knew you they certainly wouldn’t think of you as a snob. Life is too short though bro! Good call.
Thanks bud, but the line of lighting cigarettes with $100 bills would of been good to use if I could of seen her face.
Gee Cord, I guess that makes me a snob too. There are several people who have added me where I have not reciprocated - for one reason. They never even visited my site. I noticed they hit my profile page, added me as a contact, maybe pasted in a generic spam message, but never even took the time to go to my site.
Now, I guess there are a bunch of folks who just want to add to their contact hoard, MySpace style. But at least PRETEND to be interested
That’s right Tony.. I guess that is the price you pay now that MyBlogLog has gotten popular. What are you gonna do?
That’s really the downside of social networking. You get the principled people who want to make the most of the network and the others who want to collect friends like they’re
beanie babies?
pogs?
myspace “friends”?
pez dispensers?
in other words, crap that has no inherent use other than just bragging rights (or whatever).
What really stinks is that you have to make someone a contact in order to admire them. You cannot start off as an admirer and get to know someone. It seems backwards.
It looks like MyBlogLog is planning to start limiting users 15 contact requests and community joins per day. Hopefully that will put the brakes on those users who joined one week ago and already have over 1000 “contacts”.
Matt - You’re right, that is why I have been saying all along, get rid of contacts all together. Just be able to join communities. It is not like having a person as a contact adds anything that you don’t already get when joining the community.
Kevin - 15 contacts a day? Really? So what is that going to do other than slow someone down? I have to tell you I am very concerned for MyBlogLog. It seems recently anything that Yahoo touches turns to crap and this is a very critical time for MyBlogLog. I have questions on whether they are going to be successful in the long term.
Thanks for both your posts.
JP,
You’re absolutely right, I guess it was bound to happen. So does this mean we need to find a new place to play?
Nice one….Enjoyed reading it….
@ Kevin:
Thats pretty interesting news, limiting the amount of people you can add in a single day seems to me a little bit reactive to the situation. I think that LinkedIn has a pretty effective system, you cant be added as a connection unless the other person agrees to link with you. When I see people on LinkedIn with 500+ connections, i automatically wonder how many of those connections are real connections in which there’s an actual relationship with each other. I’ve declined invitations because I didnt know the person, or because that person merely seemed like they found me through a keyword search.
@Cord:
Social networking is still in its infancy and i think what we’re seeing here are the growing pains of new networks that have good ideas, good intentions, but fail to put up safeguards to keep any kind of relevance. When i had a myspace account, I would get the most random invitations.. i eventually gave up on myspace… i didnt really have anything to say to their audience. MyBlogLog can be a great resource for likeminded people to share interests… but overall, i havent been impressed with its overall value. They seem to have a “me too” attitude for innovation. However, i know that as people see the successes and more importantly the failures, social networking will become a more powerful tool in the near future.
Hi All,
But whats the point in limiting the no of contacts added to 10 or 15, if people want they can add as many, the other person need to add only if he wants…..I think this is the best way rather than getting approval from the other person….this is all about social networking…..
@Sherman,
Its very difficult to control the invitations in a social network…..social networks are all about expanding ur friends and like minded people….there cant be a social network with all correct things in place…So I think the idea by myBlogLog and explode communities are great.
Nirmal,
I have to disagree with you. Social networking is not anything close to just being able to just add anyone you want to as a “friend”. Social networking is about creating connections, real connections. It is more than just being added as a friend. It is about building a relationship with someone and that can span across many boundaries. It is not about seeing who has the biggest friends list.
I don’t think the 15 contacts per day limit is going to do much more than slow down the contact-collectors, but at least it shows MBL recognizes the problem.
I agree that this is a critical time for MBL, and I don’t have a lot of confidence in Yahoo’s ability to improve the service. They’ve already announced that they’ll be using Yahoo’s ID system in the near future, at which point I’ll probably stop using it.
I have ignored all but very specific contact requests on MyBlogLog, as up until recently there wasn’t a real purpose to them.
Not too long ago every contact request sent out an email. One very prominent ex MBL user once added 8000 people selectively as friends
@Cord,
I understand social network is about creating connections, but what has to be the first step in this? That would be to create a friend…
See I’ll give u an example…I add u as a friend in X community and as per my logic there would not be any need for any approval from your side (i.e. you are my friend, but I’m not yours)….now another person Mr Y knows me and you, but Mr. Y and me doesnt have a direct contact, but he visits ur profile and see me, so there is a chance that we can make friends through other’s network… This will all happen only if there is no restriction on adding as friends..
To be frank I met lot of my old friends through social networks, just because I had contact with lot of people whom even I didnt know, but came to know through these networks..
I still feel social networks are about increasing your contacts…and building relations
Nirmal,
Your example is the right one when it comes to many social networks like MySpace and even Linkedin, but this does not work for MyBlogLog. MyBlogLog is about the blogs and the content on those blogs. I don’t need to make a friend or a contact with a specific author to be able to be apart of his community, read his content and provide comments.
How I have gotten friendly with people and then added them onto my contacts is exactly what we are doing here, commenting and talking about our opinions and thoughts. That is how connections are made, not that Mr. X knows Mr. Y and he is connected through Mr. Z. That is irrelevant when it comes to MyBlogLog. I do not have to have any connection at all to be able to read, comment and enjoy someone’s blog which is exactly what MyBlogLog was created for.
Let me know your thoughts.
Cord,
I was talking about social networks in general and not regarding myBloglog alone, although this post has reference to myBloglog..and regarding myBloglog what you said may be correct, but still…..