MyBlogLog Community Messaging…Ripe for Spam?
One of the new functions recently introduced at MyBlogLog is the ability to send a message to your entire community in one single operation called Community Messaging. For those who haven’t found this yet it’s a new link added next to the links that reside to the right of the thumbnail of your blog. For the rest, read the post I linked to above.
The overall reaction to this announcement has been fairly negative in that most MLB members see this as a open conduit for spam from those who are using MLB strictly for marketing purposes (see the comments of the above post I linked to). It’s easy to see where all this negativity comes from since each message received generates an email to the addressed member as well unless they have turned this feature off which is usually not the case. Okay, in that respect the negative reactions make sense.
I do have to wonder (in my humble opinion) about the rather extreme choice of certain members who immediately decided to remove themselves from any community where the member in question used this mass mailing feature at all. One of these folks is Andy Beard as is plain to see from his blog post on this very subject.
Now I have much respect for Andy. His experience and know how plus his willingness to help others has always made him a bit of a favorite of mine but I also made up my my mind long ago that I’m going to disagree with him on a few points now and then. His thoughts on this particular subject are absolutely valid and for the most part, I agree with them but I simply can’t agree about leaving the community of just anyone who uses the broadcast mailing feature. To me it simply depends on what that person used community messaging for. If it’s just to say thank you to the members of their community(s) or send out a general announcement to their community members then that would be fine by me, just don’t do it everyday…alright? So absolutely no offense to Andy, he just offered the best example of this type of reaction and I always try to supply the best example.
The next day Eric of MyBlogLog put up another post in regard to that fairly massive feedback by dividing up his response into 4 separate thoughts. I do have to admire Eric for what I thought was an excellent response overall. In a nutshell, everything will stay as is for a week or so for feedback purposes and then adjusted accordingly to said feedback but there is much more to it so reading his post is a must.
So what’s my opinion? Okay…I know you didn’t ask but I’ll give it to you anyway. I agree with Andy’s points except the one I mentioned above and I agree with Eric’s stand on things as well. Very smart decision on his part. For me, I believe community messaging will end up policing itself by it’s very nature and the nature of the MLB communities themselves. The response by the MLB community at large to anyone who tries to use this new feature to intentionally send out spam, in my opinion, will be rapid and permanent.
Unlike the Internet as a whole where one can set up temporary email addresses and mass email setups that are here today…gone today, any potential spammer at MyBlogLog is directly connected to their own blog and community, in other words…they are a member as well not some anonymous Hotmail or Yahoo webmail address where there is no option for retaliation. If anyone tries to use community messaging for spamming purposes they may soon find themselves with no community of their own at all and maybe a significant drop in visitors at their associated blog as well. And when pointed out to the “powers that be” at MyBlogLog, they might just find themselves ousted out on their fanny along with it. I really don’t think it would take that long to effectively bring MyBlogLog to a relatively spam-free status as far as community messaging is concerned.
I believe the best thing for MyBlogLog to do is give it’s members the tools they need to weed out these potential spammers from the rest of the community by…
- Adding the “reply, “report”, “spam” and “delete” links attached to each community message received instead of just “delete”.
- Give us the option of turning off the receiving of community “mass” messages with the possibility of an auto-reply to the sender stating such. It would be even better if the content of the auto-reply could be changed by the user.
- Any member caught using community messaging for spamming purposes will have their account suspended…period.
So that’s my opinion of this whole conundrum of MyBlogLog’s new mass messaging feature such as it is. You have your own of course and if you wish to sound off here about it, you’re always welcome to as usual.
Oh, and by the way…I used that community messaging feature just once yesterday to thank my community members of this blog for joining my community in the first place and for dropping by here once and awhile. Something I just didn’t have time to do on an individual basis.
This morning I lost one community member. Wonder who that could be?
Technorati tags: Mybloglog, mass messaging, messaging, community messaging, email, spam
Isn’t part of the problem here that MyBlogLog doesn’t seem to have given a clear indication of the purpose of communities?
Sure, it’s nice to see that a whole bunch of folk have joined my community, but what benefit do they get from doing so? I realise some of them were added automatically, but others joined deliberately.
Is it done simply to express support to the writer? Is it one stage less than formally adding a person as a contact?
I’m simply wondering what others think.
Hey Baxter, An excellent question indeed and you just may have hit on why I’ve always had such a difficult time with the whole concept of blog communities. Not that I don’t enjoy being part of one or that I don’t welcome their existence—I do. It’s just a feeling of vague incompleteness about the whole thing. These communities, not just MyBlogLog, have great beginnings and a solid middle ground but it just seems fade to a stop after that.
I’d be interested in what other’s think also.
@Kirk — Great post. It’s much easier to listen to someone who puts out their response in a balanced fashion than someone who just says “you people are idiots!” (And I say that knowing full well that I am the pot calling the kettle black — I’m an assh-le in person
We’re still deciding what (if any) changes will be made next week. Stay tuned.
@Baxter — Great question, and there’s no simple answer. For most people, it’s just nice to put a face to all their anonymous visitors. We do offer some nice info once you get more than ten members, like what they are clicking (in aggregate) elsewhere and what other communities they’re a part of. This can help you better understand and write content for your readers.
Eric – I’m not having a go at you, and I hope you don’t feel like I am when you read this.
I am yet to see anyone just say “you people are idiots”. I have seen a lot of people give you excellent reasons why this is a bad idea, and you have chosen to wait before making any decision. This gives people time to open their eyes, look around, and see there are other options out there. I think that was a mistake on your part.
You have also offended a lot of people after the comments you made about why people belong to so many communities – even people who don’t belong to lots of them. Your premise is incorrect. People often join communities because people joined theirs. That’s the way these social networks work.
Some people now feel like they’re going to be judged on how many communities they belong to and how much they participate in them. And it’s hilarious in the light of the fact that as I type this, you have 179,433 family, friends and contacts on MyBlogLog. I am one of them – and I don’t even know you. It seems you add everyone who joins as a contact. Is that what the rest of us should be doing? Are we to follow your lead on that one?
Unfortunately that’s not going to go away easily, it’s going to take a lot of work on your part to fix that. And some people, you never will sort it out with. They’ve moved on already – to blog catalog. I’m checking it out myself today and I read a review comparing the two, blog catalog actually sounds better. They’ll have learned from this mistake you’ve made, I’m certain of that.
It is a great shame that you are so busy being “right” that you’re not stopping to consider the realities and full implications of the situation, or the feelings of your members. If you haven’t decided yet, you’re going to be too late for many people. In fact you should have made the decision early on when you saw how many people were against it.
I’m sorry that this has turned into such a major bunfight. It’s a shame. This could have been handled a LOT better.
Snoskred
http://snoskred.blogspot.com/
Hey Eric, (I’m not leaving you out here Snoskred. Your comment was directed to Eric rather than both of us.)
Thanks for dropping by and glad you liked the post. After reading the various comments and replies here and reading over the related posts (especially by everyone who left a comment here) on the subject I’m still of the mind to wait and see how it goes. This is just my personal take on the matter and as the owner of this blog I’m not going to choose any particular side since everyone so far has made reasonable and understandable points in support of their opinion. But to me…
The idea of the blogging “community” site such as MyBlogLog, Blog Catalog and Bumpzee for example is still too relatively new on the scene for anyone to have a really good idea about the beginning, middle and end of the actual process yet. In regards to what the actual purpose of these communities is for, in my observation, is still very much a work in progress with more learning ahead for everyone. It simply hasn’t had the time to evolve enough to have formed any sort of “standard formula for success” as yet. There’s still a lot of trial and error to be done and how can you know if something works or not if you don’t give it a try?
If all that comes of this is finding out it was a bad idea in the first place and the feature gets pulled then in my experience, something was still accomplished. Even if it was discovering what doesn’t work and what didn’t work about it. In the end it always comes down to people and the fact that you just can’t trust (all of) them to do the right thing. If it weren’t for spammers, then mass messaging wouldn’t be a problem now would it?
You’re right Kirk, I did address it more to him
and now this one is more to you.. 
Kirk said –
“If it weren’t for spammers, then mass messaging wouldn’t be a problem now would it?”
Well, there would still be plenty of issues surrounding it in my opinion. For example, what about the blogger who signs up to say (just as an example) an advertising on your blog thing which offers them money for referring people, then decides to join up to more communities, just so they can send them all an email which says hey, have you heard about this great service, go sign up at this link.
It really just is open to all kinds of abuse, sadly. And again, my point is that we all have blogs, that’s where we get to put our messages out there without forcing them down anyone’s throats – if they want to drop by and read about the great new service we signed up for, that’s cool. If they’re reading on an RSS feed, they can choose whether to just scroll past or actually read it. Sending an email to a mass of people really isn’t the right thing and is equivalent to spam, no matter how you look at it. Even if it is just to say “Hi, how’s it going, drop by my blog”.
Abuse will still happen with a one on one private message system – and that is where your point number one in your original post comes in, if the private messaging system is to stay. I personally don’t think it should, because it is open to plenty of abuse *from both ends* – not just from people spamming, but people reporting innocent private messages as spam. What company in their right mind would voluntarily waste that kind of time sorting stuff like that out? It’s bad enough on internet forums. It’s bad enough when one blogger gets upset with another blogger and chooses to post publicly about it.
I think the bottom line is what you said – you just can’t trust people to do the right thing. One bad apple spoils it for everyone, and on the internet many of the apples were a little dodgy to start off with, if you know what I mean..
Morning Snoskred (at least for me that is),
Ah, should humans be so mature as to refrain from misusing such a messaging system…or anything else for that matter. Not in our lifetime I’m afraid.
Your points are absolutely valid and the funny thing is in my original profile write up on MyBloglog that appears on my “Home” page, I initially suggested that anyone who wished to leave me a message should do so at my blog rather than MyBlogLog since I only log in about once a week or so. And I just noticed now that I neglected to include that line when I revamped it. I’ll have to correct that.
I have a feeling that Eric might just drop this feature once the week is up. He’s right in giving it a short trial period though and not to start changing things within hours of it’s introduction. That’s always a mistake. But short is the key word here. You couldn’t leave something like this up (as it is) for a couple-three months without a lot of havoc breaking loose. Then I’m sure he’d permanently lose some members to other communities then. Since he’s giving it just a week I don’t think any significant damage will be done.
This kind of thing really does need to be tried though. It’s important to learn what doesn’t work in a new system and why it doesn’t work, as well as what does work and why. The why’s being most important here. Otherwise the system would never evolve and mature. I remember Eric stating in the original announcement of the “mass messaging” feature that it was by user request that it was considered in the first place…
I’m curious…who were the users who did the requesting I wonder?