Wednesday 30 March 2011

MyBlogLog And The Power Of Bloggers

You may have heard the news that Yahoo! is sadly discontinuing the MyBlogLog service on the 24th May 2011. As a blogger, this is devastating news, especially if you have used MyBlogLog to build large communities which in return, generates a fair amount of traffic for your blog.

As a result of this news, I've just received an email from Antony Berkman of BlogCatalog informing me of a service and campaign that I'm sure you'll be interested in. Here's a copy of that email:


Subject: The Power Of Bloggers

BLOGGERSUNITE

"United We Stand, Divided We Fall" - Aesop

You don't need me to tell you that the world has its share of major catastrophes and disasters.

The people of Japan are in desperate need of our help and bloggers and other social media participants continue to raise millions of dollars for those in need.

I am grateful to say that BloggersUnite.org, thanks to a large number of bloggers, has been active in raising funds and awareness for those in need.

I am writing to you because there is a story that while it clearly does not rise to the same level of human tragedy, I believe strongly will make a major difference to the future of blogging.

Yahoo! recently announced the imminent shut down of MyBlogLog. While this news has been largely ignored by mainstream media, the event is disturbing because it shuts down a major channel of the blogosphere.

For years now MyBlogLog has been ignored by Yahoo! and now they are shutting it down because it doesn't fit within their corporate strategy.


What does MyBlogLog's closure mean to you?

  • You may think it doesn't mean anything or even think whether they still exist, or whether you even have heard of them, the truth is that MyBlogLog is a valuable blogging network that distributes tens of millions of visitors to blogs each year.

  • Yahoo! has shown no respect to bloggers throughout it's 4 year ownership of the site. Once again, they are failing to follow through on promises and responsibilities to bloggers. Perhaps Yahoo! believes it has no responsibility to bloggers.

  • The closure of MyBlogLog represents a lack of respect to bloggers who have built tens of thousands of communities on the network and spent countless hours adding MyBlogLog widgets to their blogs.

  • Yahoo! has made no attempt to dispose of MyBlogLog, yet it represents an important channel of distribution for blogs.


Why you should care?

BloggersUnite.org and BlogCatalog are ready, willing and able to take over MyBlogLog and turn MyBlogLog into a valuable tool for bloggers and blog readers. We shared our interest with Yahoo! over a year ago to do this. Yahoo! ignored our requests to talk to them, we had a brief conversation, they wanted to know our strategy for making the site more valuable and because we refused, their communications with us ended.


So, what difference will it make if I join this event?

The more members we have on BloggersUnite.org the greater the positive impact we can make to the world. A combination of BloggersUnite + MyBlogLog + BlogCatalog is "The Right Thing."

To-date, together with your help we have saved lives, made material differences in the lives of school kids, raised money for Haiti, helped build clean water wells in Africa, worked with the CDC to raise awareness about STDs, united refugees with their families, worked with Aids.gov to harness the power of the blogosphere on AIDS Awareness Day and we had hundreds of thousand of bloggers unite on Bloggers for Good Day; where bloggers from BloggersUnite were featured on CNN doing good deeds.

It makes little sense when people in this world are starving and dying because they lack clean water that Yahoo!, one of the largest technology companies in the USA, would shut down an asset that has value.

Why not sell it and give the money to a charity? Their site has value. As Warren Buffet says, "stupid in small things, stupid in big." I humbly ask that you please unite with thousands of other bloggers and explain to Yahoo! management what would be the "right thing" to do or add an Action Badge to your blog, or perhaps both.

To do this please click BloggersUnite because unlike Yahoo!, we are fully aware that when you combine your voice with the voice of other bloggers, that there is no greater force for good in the world today.

Antony Berkman
BloggersUnite


Will the closure of MyBlogLog effect you? Is it right for Yahoo! to discontinue this service knowing it will seriously effect the majority of bloggers who use it? Please share your thoughts.


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Enjoy the rest of the week!

2 comments:

  1. A big part of the blogosphere will be affected by this thing....quite a lot of bloggers use it to build their network...some have huge communities....all will be gone.Yahoo should understand this....the amount of time the bloggers spent to build their networks

    http://filmedit.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree with you Abhisek. What I cannot understand is why Yahoo! feel the need to close down MyBlogLog (which will cause major disruption) when they can simply sell it. The mind boggles :)

    ReplyDelete

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