MyBlogLog Community Messages Are Annoying
Published July 10th, 2007 in MyBlogLog, blogging, blogs, social networking sites, spamMany of you are users of MyBlogLog and probably already agree with the title of this post. Andy Beard has written an article detailing his own frustrations with MyBlogLog’s New Features and, as usual, I find it hard to disagree. He goes as far as to say that he is leaving any community that makes use of the community message feature.
Some may see this as somewhat of an extreme reaction, but if you’re a member of a number of communities on MyBlogLog, then you may be receiving quite a few of these community messages. I’m currently a member of 500 communities on MyBlogLog and while I haven’t exactly been deluged by community messages, I’ve received enough of them to become annoyed.
Andy views these messages as spam. I’m not sure I would go as far as that, as we have joined these communities voluntarily. At the same time, though, we joined these communities without giving assent to receiving a bunch of mass mailings. Some of these mass mailings definitely have a spammy flavor.
So, what’s the solution? Clearly, the best way for MyBlogLog to put out the immediate fires is to allow users to opt out of receiving community messages. Currently, you can only opt out of all email notifications which also includes those that are sent when personal messages are received. This isn’t ideal because those personal messages are typical a much higher priority for you than the community messages.
MyBlogLog seems to be pretty responsive to their user’s input and Andy is a great advocate of social networking sites, especially MyBlogLog. Based on comments on his blog, I know they read his posts. Hopefully, they’ll deal with this issue quickly and continue making MyBlogLog one of the best social networks on the net. Until then, I would caution users to be very judicious about sending community messages.
There’s a lot more to this issue than meets the eye. The 419 scammers are using the private messaging features on Bumpzee to send one on one messages to members. It is only a matter of time before they discover the great new mass mailing feature on MyBlogLog and head on over to make use of it. I wrote a couple of posts about this last week and also posted links to other bloggers posts about it.
Snoskred
http://snoskred.blogspot.com/
Hi Snoskred. I’ll have to check out your posts. I wasn’t aware of the 419 scammers using social networks. I think they’re probably the most hated bad guys on the internet right now and for good reason. I’m really hoping the social networking sites find some constructive way to protect their users from this stuff. Thanks for commenting!
Ray, I received a response from MyBlogLog when I covered this same topic on my blog. You can click on my name to read in the comment section what Ian Kennedy had to say, but I will share that they are taking steps to stop the spamming.
I still like MBL, but StumbleUpon is my favorite.
Hi Matt. I read your article and the comments. I’m starting to like StumbleUpon more and more because of it’s ease of use and broader appeal than MBL. I’m glad MBL responded with the opt-outs for emails of community messages. They still have a ways to go, but I still like them, too. Thanks for joining the conversation!