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
It was a very tough decision to make initially but eventually it was the easiest one that could easily be reversed at a later date.
It was my only way to switch off receiving messages by email that were mass broadcast, whilst still receiving emails for individual messages.
Another alternative would have been to report as spam many blogs that have been in my feed reader for more than half a year, and among them were a number of extremely notable blogs with 5K+ readers who should have known better.
More than one of them offers professional email marketing consultation.
Some of the messages really were spam, others were more casual, but intended to draw traffic to a blog displaying advertising.
Once the service is fixed, I will rejoin most of the communities I have left, but with no emails for broadcast messages, unless it is a particular blog which delivers vital information and only posts once per month, and might overlook in my feedreader by accident.
Once users figure out how to turn off email notifications there won’t be a spam issue. I turned my notifications off because I got tired of all the “______ added you as a contact” email.
Nice site, BTW this post is how I found you.
BeachBum Michael
Hi Andy,
Good to see you again.
It’s a bit easier to understand your decision now from your comment and as I said I can agree with your opinions of the new mass messaging feature even as I can agree with Eric’s decision to leave things as they are for the moment. Your points were well made (of course…as they always are). You can always be trusted to make your point absolutely clear. That’s why I referred to your post in the first place.
To be sure, our viewpoints in respect to our blogging efforts is much different from each other’s so what may not affect myself and some other folks at MLB so much, I’m sure, is totally different from where you sit.
I hope the appropriate changes can be made to the new system so you and the others who had reason to feel the same way are able to rejoin the communities that you had to leave. Unfortunately, there are always those who have to take advantage of something strictly for their own interests and always to the detriment of others.
Hello BeachBum,
Welcome to my corner of the world…such as it is. Happy to hear from you. Thanks for the compliment and adding me as a contact. Much appreciated.
I agree that turning off email notifications can stop a member from getting message spam but more choices really have to be added in order to separate the wheat from the chafe so to speak. At least have two options for mass messaging:
One to opt out of the mass messaging feature altogether and two…an option to just shut off the email notifications for those mass messages. That would seem sensible, don’t you think?
Hi KirkM,
I think there is actually a lot more to this than meets the eye. I say that because I am a scambaiter and I know how these scammers work. I’ve written a post with further info on the topic.
MyBlogLog and scammers & spammers
While I agree with your point about looking at the message you get, the bigger issue here is once you offer the possibility of communicating with a large amount of people easily, the scammers and spammers will soon follow.
The trouble here is, many people on the internet are NOT aware of the 419 scams, and I don’t want to see anyone being scammed out of money. It happens all the time via regular email, and many people are working really hard to try and get the message out and educate the public on scams and how they work. Some issues involved are –
- people think if it doesn’t mention Nigeria or Africa, it’s not a scam
- scammers are getting smarter and smarter, and use many different tactics to get money out of people. Just when we’ve educated them on one type of scam, the scammers switch to something else. We’ve recently seen the Assassination scams take off and people are paying scammers money over these.
- lottery scams are a huge problem because many people already believe they are going to win lotto, it’s just a matter of time. The scammers know this and they use the names of legitimate lotteries to make it seem more real. They will ask for a small amount of money to begin with, maybe $50-100. Then they ask for a few hundred a few times, and by this time the victim has already invested emotionally and financially – and they’ve likely spent that lotto money in their head.
- so many people think that you have to be stupid to fall for a scam like these. That’s not the case. Smart people are usually the first to fall for these things. It also makes it difficult for people to admit they have been scammed, they don’t want people to think they are stupid.
- phishing scams and fake websites are becoming more of a problem as the days go by.
- the news media would rather report Paris Hilton and her movements than tell people about these scams.
These are but a few of the myriad of major issues involved. I do not think MyBlogLog wants to offer a service to scammers, they want to offer a service to bloggers. Community messaging is not something needed by most people, because if they want to message their community, they have a blog on which they can do that. If the system remains you will find the scammers trying to phish MyBlogLog passwords out of people – and that is where a lot of the emails will come from. That presents another larger problem – will the community members think the message comes from the person whose community they joined? Will they leave that community thinking that person is a scammer?
We as bloggers work very hard to create communities and prove to people that we are trustworthy and decent people. Can you imagine what would happen if a scammer stole your password and sent out scam mails to all your community members? It’s bad enough out there now with the issues of copyright and accusations of stealing content threatening to damage the reputations of good, decent, well known bloggers.
There’s a lot more to this than meets the eye, I’m afraid.
I recently came across a situation (which I emailed Eric about) where 2 of the “popular community” pages were just a single page blog post with no words and 3 blocks of Adsense.
It turned out the owner actually had 4 such sites on the same profile, and the best part of all their content was just a nice photo of a city as their Community logo.
They each had 100 or so community members, many you would recognise.
If those people who join junk blog get spammed, it is their fault.
There is also at least one blog in the top50 that most bloggers would look on as a splog – it is little more than a feed of articles from an article directory.
It is not illegal, but I noticed that the whole blog has been grey barred because it is all duplicate content.
This is a community with over 2000 members.
People just aren’t smart enough to recognise they are being fooled.
Andy – I’m not sure if that is about smart. It could be more about not having enough time and having a lot of things on plates. If a blog becomes popular it’s sort of like a rocket blasting off – there’s so much going on at once, you really aren’t sure what you’re doing. You’re just trying to make sure the rocket doesn’t explode. The amount of emails you get can drown you. The amount of work you want to do on your own blog can drown you. The amount of people suddenly linking to you and you wanting to link back to them can drown you. All the things you’re supposed to do as a blogger can drown you.
It’s like a snowball which you’ve pushed up a hill, and then it takes off down the other side. You’ve worked hard, but you don’t really have the time to enjoy it because you want to try and keep everyone satisfied.
Those of us (most of us really) who are genuine and nice people don’t want to hurt other people’s feelings. If I went in and found 200 new community members tomorrow, the first thing I would want to do is join their communities, so it doesn’t look like I’m some nasty snob ignoring them. If you get hammered like that, there’s not enough time to go and check out all the blogs and make sure they’re not junk blogs – but you don’t want to upset people by not adding them.
The nature of communities means many people in them want to be nice to each other, they want to give back, they want to be a part of things, they want to be loyal to each other.
So I don’t know whether it is smart or lack of time. The bottom line is, we all have blogs. That’s where we can communicate with each other. We don’t need this community messaging system.
Cheers,
Snoskred
http://snoskred.blogspot.com/
Hello Snoskred, Andy,
I’m off to work and your comments deserve a lot more than just a skim over and quick acknowledgment. I want to take time to read them both and the post(s) before I join in. Sorry for the delay but I can’t quit the day job just yet.
It’s tempting to go in late though…
Ah, tis the evening and all that.
Hi Andy,
I’ve run across the same thing several times now where websites only list duplicate articles and “blogs with nothing but advertisements on them with little or no content to be found. I’ve even found some of my posts in these types of sites until I tweaked my robot.txt file enough to eliminate most of them.
The thing that surprises me the most (as you point out) that these “blogs” actually have medium to large communities. To my way of thinking, if you don’t have time to adequately check out the community your thinking of joining then don’t join the community until you have the time.
I do tend to agree with what you say in your comment and I can’t fathom why anyone would join a community before finding out something about the blogger that the community belongs to. Unfortunately I have seen too many people over the years do unbelievably stupid things or just acting in haste or under some imagined pressure without thinking first in all sorts of different situations so why should blog communities be any different?
Hi Snoskred,
First of all thanks for taking the time to provide all the info you put into your comment. A lot to digest there however, it does just about sum up all the problems I’ve seen myself of all the internet based scams I’ve ever seen in the years that the WWW has existed. I also read the two articles you referenced and I have to say the spam assassin was one I hadn’t heard about yet.
You hit on a lot of aspects of spamming and the scams associated with them and as an old(er) computer type who started out in the 70′s I can understand where you’re coming from. You’ve obviously done your homework and a heck of a lot of research. More than I can address in one sitting.
To my way of thinking though, I’d be very interested to see where this community based mass messaging system heads to. I’m curious to see what kind of controls MyBlogLog gives it’s members to control this new feature, who takes advantage of it and what happens to them when they do or does MyBlogLog just ditch the whole thing in the end. Sometimes you have to try something like this even just to prove it’s a mistake and the environment this messaging system operates in is unique simply in the aspect that it’s extremely small as compared to the global environment that these scam artists are normally used to operating in. You might understand when I say I hate to see something that was intended to enhance communication between a group of people being put out of commission because of these (extreme nastiness) idiots.
I more than understand about having a lot of things on the plate and feeling pressured to “return the favor”. I understand also the old adage of “look before you leap” but that may be simply because I’ve been in business for so many years. It could also mean that I’m one of them middle age type bloggers…or it could mean I’m just old(er).
In the meantime, if I found out that I had 200 new members in my community overnight, I’d just have to use the new mass messaging system to let all those new members know that they would just darn well have to wait!
Please feel free to come back and berate me for my strange sense of humor.
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?