MyBlogLog Redesigns the Site: Why Don’t They Follow FriendFeed Pattern?
by
on July 28, 2008,
Today the rather popular network for bloggers MyBlogLog announces redesign of their website - unfortunately, without any new features or without following the obvious pattern of FriendFeed.
In general it seems to me that the company has decided to stick to changing the design whenever they feel that some improvements are needed. But unfortunately new design does not guarantee popularity for the service. True, the new version of their community widget for blogs drew enough attention to the product back in February and made some bloggers rethink their opinions about displaying the widget so I now see it more often when browsing. But rarely the looks actually make or break companies - and given the dubious decisions like launching the community messaging tool which made many of us spend quite some time opting out of receiving constant messages from the blogs’ communities we belong to, I am under impression that the guys behind MyBlogLog tend to make wrong moves in development. And this one sounds like another move that may not be entirely wrong but is entirely pointless.
The thing is that the redesign is exactly what it is - nothing but a redesign that adds rounded edges and shadows to frame the existing functionality of the site. No new features seem to be added at all - so I don’t really think the announcement is all that exciting, I’d much rather prefer to see some new functionality added or improved instead of having another place to look at the rounded corners (even though I rarely log into the site myself - mostly when I get a notification for someone adding me as a contact).
Where I see MyBlogLog could easily go is in FriendFeed direction. After all, it already aggregates all our services in a single place and after logging in you can instantly see what’s new with your friends as well. But what I don’t see is the ability to leave a comment and initiate a discussion about an item - which really sounds rather obvious to me. I don’t see any reason for MyBlogLog not to focus their efforts on this instead of rolling out a redesign without anything new at all. Admittedly, it is easier said than done - and probably scalability issues could emerge here but at least that could have at least made people log in more frequently to see what’s new and discuss some of the recent events in their friends’ online life. So instead of simply being able to connect on these listed services, bloggers could actually communicate here as well.
The only thing that is actually new is the design of the homepage (that you will be able to access by logging out of your account if you have one). The homepage is now intended to demonstrate the philosophy of the product better using the new catch phrase the company has come up with - “Discover, Broadcast, and Connect” so that newcomers can get an instant better understanding of what they should expect by joining the service.
Unfortunately, existing users are not offered anything particularly new and I still don’t see any reason for visiting the upgraded site more often - I don’t really care about the shiny looks when they are not supported by useful features.
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Svetlana Gladkova
Opensource 
Michael Fidler 
Hi Svetlana,
Thanks for the write-up. I would agree with you - this really is just a minor facelift, nothing really new here or worth writing about. The main reason for the update was for the front page which did a pretty poor job of explaining what MyBlogLog did and why someone should sign-up. The new header and slight re-working of the inner pages was a quick job that we took advantage of while we had the hood up.
Don’t worry, we have much cooler things in the works that are much more worthy of your attention. I hope to be able to share more details about them in the coming weeks.
I want to address what you said about following FriendFeed. It’s my view that if someone is doing a good job at something, to let them run with it. We’ve built the MyBlogLog New with Me lifestreaming feature with a fundamentally different approach from FriendFeed.
Our philosophy is to provide a broadcast platform for notification but to drive conversation back to the original site so it can take place in context for everyone to see. Rather than take traffic away, we want to share and grow it for our partners.
Cheers,
Ian
All my permalinks disappeared on my stats last night on MyBlogLog. “What readers viewed” is now a long column of numbers all linked to the front page of my blog.
This is a redesign?
Ian, thank you for stopping by and for the comment, I appreciate your explanation of the situation. The only problem is that it is hard to expect bloggers will keep silence when you announce an upgrade - and judging by those blogs that made it to Techmeme thread on the post I am not the one who was actually disappointed about absence of new features.
I will certainly be looking forward to the “cooler things” you promise, it is interesting to see what you have in mind. As for FriendFeed, I understand your point of view but I don’t agree - it is good to aggregate everything but giving users a chance to interact with it would have been much better for MBL, even from the business point of view since it would have resulted in deeper involvement of users with your service. Besides, I don’t think that all the bloggers that are on MBL are already on MBL - and for some of them you could have offered a totally new concept that many could find as appealing as many people already find FriendFeed.
@s: Sorry to hear that, I have not actually checked if everything worked fine myself - I did not think this minor update could break anything. If you have any details published on your blog, would you mind sharing the link with us?
Their system logged me out and now requires a yahoo ID to log in. I don’t want a Yahoo ID, as I already have way too many things out there. So now I have no access and no longer show up in their widgets. And I’ve been a user since day one.
This is extremely stupid.
Martin, I actually think that Yahoo ID was needed for quite some time on MyBlogLog - I already had to link it to my Yahoo ID long ago after some logging out myself. But since I had Yahoo mail account for ages it did not matter to me.
Heya Svetlana!
Thank you for the feedback! Where Friendfeed is doing a great job of harvesting information and containing conversation, it aint the business we are in here at MyBlogLog
We have launched all sortsa clever features in the last few months to help users connect with each other! Have you gotten a chance to play around with Friender or Connector? They can be located from your profile homepage by clicking on Add/Manage link from the Family, Friends and Contacts section.
Like Ian said earlier, the redesign was only intended as a face lift, nothing that we slaved hours on while ignoring the functionality of the site! You must admit, it was very long overdue, haha!
XOXO
Tilly
Hey Tilly,
Thanks for stopping back and for the explanation. I do understand your idea actually but it looks like I’m not the only one reacting like this to this latest announcement (or face lift - whatever). And this is because while people find the features you have released (Friender and Connector) quite useful, we all see a logical next step that you are not planning to make. You see, I have connected all my profiles on various services in MyBlogLog account - that’s good. I know that many of my friends have done the same. But are they really used heavily? I really don’t think so.
You know, I only log in to reciprocate or decline friend requests when I get notifications by email myself. And the last time I actually went to MBL willingly myself and without any reminder was when I badly needed someone’s email and could not find it on Facebook. Is it enough for you to have many repeat visitors? I don’t think so. But if we could engage with the content that our friends share, you could have received a number of users very much willing to come back again and again. And I suspect that many of your users have no idea about FriendFeed at all so you could introduce something totally new to these people.