MyBlogLog Community Mass Message SPAM Controversy
I have been very vocal about new feature that MyBlogLog has introduced – community mass message as I see it as a huge issue for anyone participating in MBL communities. But I do have mixed feelings about this feature:
- I Hate It In Its Current State And Still Think It Can Be Great Feature
Now perhaps my opinion will not be the most popular but I’ll be sharing it anyway. Several bloggers spoke out on this new feature and if you want to read their opinion and multitude of comments I’ll provide link below post but for now – my take on MyBlogLog Mass Community Messaging.
I join communities for several reasons and not all of them might be obvious and perhaps some can be questionable but I’m just a human.
- Main reason for joining is to be associated with blogs closely related to the theme of my blog. And MyBlogLog is great at providing me with an easy way to find all those blogs. Considering that many of them are new and not attempting to optimize for SE while providing superb content – MBL is the ONLY way I would find them! By joining these communities I increase visibility of my own blog and perhaps return them a favor if they decide to join my own.
- An auto-Join community is second most common way I get into new communities. Sometimes they are not related to my own in any way but I find information interesting enough to visit it required minimum of 10 times and BINGO – I’m part of this community. Not that I’m against it as it gives me an easy way to find those blogs by simply reviewing communities I have joined.
- Reciprocal Join. This one will perhaps generate most criticism but hey – when someone visits my blog and joins my community I feel obligated (in moral sense) to at least visit them and leave a word of gratitude and in many cases I find their blog interesting enough that I might want to revisit later, so I join them even if they are not related!
Since you now understand my reason for joining you might be able to understand my reasons for speaking up against mass messaging. When I join community at no point was I asked for permission to send me emails as part of the community! I have never given an OK to fill my message box with unsolicited messages without EVER visiting my blog! Not only I never given permissions to send me messages I loose even the benefits of those people visiting my blog (reciprocal traffic). While I frown on SPAM messages left directly on my profile – at LEAST those people bothered to visit my blog and in many cases I have seen them join my community and hopefully subscribe to my RSS. That means to me that I managed to show at least enough value for them to visit my blog!
As it stands right now – I’m deleting ANY mass messages to remove any benefits for people who send them to me and leave community. I hate spam although I understand that some people simply failed to see the bigger issue with this new feature.
Unsolicited eMail is a SPAM!
And since by default our profiles are set to receive email notifications on any messages it hits my email box as well. I will not go over many other issues since other people have outlined them very well and here are some posts you might want to read:
- Andy Beard Has spoken his piece
- Meg has blasted the new feature and has lots of great comments
- Rob at Yack Yack makes his opinion known
- Avinash has a great post on this feature
And now Why I think it CAN be made into great feature. As a marketer I see an opportunity for how great this can be if implemented properly. It will allow one person to quickly launch a campaign on any important topic as long as it is not abused. I know it will be a temptation hard to resist so some checks put in place can make it more user friendly.
- Provide a new option in personal profile to Refuse receiving ALL mass messages except those explicitly requested via that community. This way any old communities we have already joined will not be able to send us messages.
- As part of joining community include an option to receive mass messages from that community (explicit permission) and leave it off by default. This way any new communities we join – we have that opion.
- Create a new option on community profile page to receive mass messages. This way any old communities we visit – we have an option to “opt-in” for their messages.
- Put a restriction on how many times that feature can be used. Something like once a month and then it will not be used at random.
This is just my take on this whole controversy and I have no intention to use this feature until all the issues properly addressed.
You Will Not Be Spamed when You Join My Community!
More Options Print This Page! Subscribe With RSS Reader Subscribe by EmailFiled under Social Networking |
Related posts: |
About The Blog Author
Alex Sysoef is an IT Consultant, Internet Marketer and ProBlogger who shares his passion and knowledge of WordPress, SEO, Social Media and traffic strategies on his blog WordPress Howto Spotter. Connect on Twitter or Facebook
18 Responses to “MyBlogLog Community Mass Message SPAM Controversy”
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
-
[...] also writes a well considered post. Social Bookmarking: Share it or save it: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where [...]
-
[...] MyBlogLog Community Mass Message SPAM Controversy – In this post, Alex makes some valid and highly strong points. A must read for any MyBlogLog [...]
-
MyBlogLog: Enabling Spammers…
The image at right is a sign of my commitment to not participate in the newest so-called “feature” of MyBlogLog – community messaging. It would be fine if it was just left at that, where messages from……
Hi again Alex,
Quote from Avinash’s blog: “This past March, MyBlogLog team started limiting its members to join only 15 communities and add 15 contacts during any day. Why? According to them, it was the solution to get rid of spammers. Great! Maybe one of my readers will explain how spam and spammers can be controlled by taking this step.”
Yet now MBL has created a spammers paradise…..God help us! I detest spam as much as many others and certainly won’t be using the Mass Mailing feature. I’m quite happy to interact with my readers via individual emails which are more personal, especially if the time has been taken to read their own blogs, comments, feedback etc and get to know more about the individual. My emails are only sent when the recipient has agreed to receive emails, and due to the nature of my blog it is usually a little problem solving.
I have read the five posts you have made reference too and wholeheartedly agree with all of the comments passed.
Joining communities can benefit us all, but not when it is left open to spam and people do need to be aware of the bigger issues at stake here. Thanks for raising the awareness.
Have a great day.
Colin
I am sure at least 150 of the communities I have autojoined have come from checking out blogs on Bumpzee, which can be a prolonged ordeal sorting out technical problems. You then get a thanks for joining my community, and you feel why delete the blog from your communities, it doesn’t hurt… until now.
I really would love to join the community of all my readers, then use some OPML from that to drive a megite meme, and maybe even a bigger meme including all the blogs they have in their communities. This would be more useful in many ways than things like Techmeme.
Thanks Colin,
I think it is important that members of the community bring up the issues that have a possibility to kill it. MyBlogLog has been great for me and I would hate to see it get overrun by spamers. Problem is many people don’t even realize that what they do, when sending mass message is in fact SPAM.
People just see it as cool feature … and I tend to agree but ONLY WHEN safeguards put in place to allow people not to receive it. All the current talks of unsubscribing if you don’t want to receive messages from a community simply destroy the core benefit of the MBL.
I do hope they will address it to satisfy both sides of the issue.
This MyBlogLog change is really getting alot of attention.
It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. I can control if I get email, so I will stay with MBL. On the other side I don’t intend to SPAM my members.
I would rather they join my RSS feed or add me as a Technorati favorite anyway.
BeachBum Michael
Yeah it’s a bit much fer sure*
I would like the ability to send a Group Mail out to All my Contacts – but this is worse than List Bandit!!
Hi Alex
A well rounded post. I think you’ve highlighted the major issues, and included a practical and workable solution that should keep both sides happy.
@ Michael – the issue is not will you do it or not but that it is possible and it is done without our permission.
@Billy – I’m with you. I can see at least 3-4 different ways it can be used for good and for profit as long as it is not abused. Unfortunately there is no real way to control that abuse possibility right now.
@Meg, thanks. Just doing my part
hopefully people that do control MBL come to similar conclusion. However it is implemented.
Well said Alex, I obviously agree with what you are saying too.
Im getting a few of these messages appear on my page, most are just spammy crap.
But at least Im not getting mass emails no more (ive turned the option off)
Alex,
You’ve made pretty strong points. I’ve been saying since the start that if they provide an opt out option, this mass messaging feature is great. Without an opt out option, they are just ignoring the CAN-SPAM Act.
In the past couple of days, I’ve noticed that most of the old MBL members have joined at least 300 or more communities. If Eric and his team doesn’t accept that his response and reaction was logically too poor to be posted on a corporate blog, I’m personally going to contact all these thousands of MBL members who are the members of 300 or more communities, providing a link to the MBL post in which Eric made 4 points.
The same people who are getting insulted now helped MyBlogLog reach a position where Yahoo! bought them and now see MBL team’s reaction. Anyways, we’ll see what happens. Maybe MBL wants to be more popular using a piss-the-members-off-marketing-trick.
- Avi
@ Rob, after I have unsubscribed and deleted few early messages I don’t seem to get the spam now but I ended up leaving a few communities in first days because of that.
@ Avi, I guess we will see how they will take it. Their promise was to act after a “week test” based on community feedback. Today is day 5. I think they had plenty of feedback, considering that majority of users probably don’t even know they can visit MBL blog to leave it. I know it wasn’t too obvious to me at first …
Thanks to everyone for commenting.
I guess today is the day we MIGHT find out what they decided. Their original statement was that they will let it run for a week (today is The Day) and see community reaction.
Cross our fingers guys! Cheers.
My pleasure, Alex! I’m glad that you wrote about this on your blog. I think, the tiny spark is now strong enough to burn a complete trail. I hope you get what I mean.
People are coming ahead and writing about this on their blog and I believe that it’s not going to stop if an opt-out option isn’t added in the MBL system. I can only hope that the MBL folks are going to add an opt-out option.
Cheers!
- Avi
Hi Alex,
Hopefully MBL will take note of what the community users think of their latest brainwave and provide an opt-out option……it was a bad idea in the form they presented it in.
Let’s wait and see.
All the best my friend,
Colin
Thanks for the feedback, keep it coming. A quick note to let you know that the team pushed out a release earlier today that allows you to opt-out of Community Message emails. You can select it as an option at the bottom of your Profile page. While it’s not exactly what you were suggesting, we felt the email was the biggest source of headache so we tackled that one.
For more details, see my post on the MyBlogLog blog:
http://mybloglogb.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/07/at-your-service.html
Ian,
Thanks for taking the time to visit and comment … for a while I actually thought you guys decided to ignore our voices
silly me.
I have provided a feedback on your post and am glad you have given us option to opt-out of ALL community messages (done on my profile already). Now what we need is an option to opt-in to select few … something similar to double opt-in mailist.