MyBlogLog Interview

June 25, 2007

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Interviewed Author: Robyn Tippins
URL: http://www.mybloglog.com

Q. First of all, I would like to thank you beforehand for granting me the time for this interview. Please introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Robyn Tippins. I blog at Sleepyblogger.com, MyBlogLogb.typepad.com and Gamingandtech.com. I have four kids and a husband and we live in Oakland, CA.

Q. What is your position in MyBlogLog?

Community Manager – I am the customer-facing person here. I write blog posts, go to events, answer loads of email, work directly with our members, etc.

Q. Could you tell us more about MyBlogLog team?
We are a small team (less than 10). We work out of Berkeley, CA. At this point, I’m the only female, but I’m sure that won’t be the case as we grow. We are currently looking for a handful of engineers (http://mybloglogb.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/04/mybloglog_hirin.html),
so our team will soon be almost double the size we are now. And, we all
love LOLCats.

Q. Why did you decide to create MyBlogLog? Tell us about your company’s history.

From our Help page (http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/help/):

Todd and Eric grew up together in Florida. Now Todd makes web sites and Eric makes video games. Every year or two Eric has a wacky web site idea and Todd (and his team at cloudspace) makes it happen, like the Metal Gear Solid Name Generator or Buzzsite, an early content aggregator.

During the winter holiday in 2004, Eric started a link blog (marcoullier), inspired by BoingBoing, Waxy and Kottke, among others. Even though he only had three visitors a day (his wife, his mother and Todd) he really wanted to know which links they clicked on; what they found interesting. Finding no simple solution, Eric instant messaged Todd and two months later MyBlogLog was launched.

Q. Since we added MyBlogLog to our Blog. We have received several emails asking what its purpose is. Could you explain how MyBlogLog can benefit a blogger?

Simply, MyBlogLog is a great way to deepen your online experience. Sure, the stats are amazing and the widget that allows you to see who visits your page is cool, but what it all boils down to is that MyBlogLog connects you to people you need to know. Using the tagging feature, people can easier find your blog, and likewise, you can easier find the sites that you need to find. As well, by using the Auto-Join feature, you will be joined to communities (blogs) that you frequent, and you can see which items are hot in your communities, in the aptly titled Hot In My Communities section.
I loved blogging before MyBlogLog, but as I said earlier, my online experience is much richer
now that I have it.

Q. Could you give us (bloggers) some tips on how we can improve our community with MyBlogLog?

Just by treating the other people on MyBlogLog the same way you would treat them in person. Bombarding them with links and welcome messages wouldn’t work in real life, but online, for some reason, those messages seem to feel ‘ok’. Actually, many people mark you as spam as soon as your message is irrelevant to them.

So, I guess if I were to advise someone on how to make an introductory message, I’d say go and read the person’s site, and let them know you have a similar interest or ask them
a question about something you read on their blog. Here’s a post I wrote on this subject last week:
http://mybloglogb.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/06/what_defines_a_.html

Relationships that start this way are usually more interesting, and therefore more rewarding, than a thousand ‘acquaintances’. My thing has always been to think deeper, rather than wider.

Q. In the member area there is an option to “Tag”. Can you please explain more about it?

Tags can be easily used to categorize a site. Let’s say I was looking for a blog on ‘horses’. I could go to http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/tags/horses and find several great blogs on horses. We hope that tagging makes sites easier to find.

As well, tags can be fun. Some of the team tagged me Mom, Rockstar and Twitterist. These were fun tags, that call into play some of the interesting parts of my personality. Hopefully, those tags tell a little bit about who I am. As well, now I know that there are several
other Twitterists, Rockstars and Moms (lots of moms) out there that I can befriend. Here’s a more in-depth post on our Tags
(http://mybloglogb.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/05/all_about_tags.html).

Q. Every time that a new member signs up to MyBlogLog, there is a name (Eric) under Family, Friends and contact. Why?

Eric is everyone’s first friend. Eric and Todd co-founded MyBlogLog and they thought it sucked that when you started you had no friends. In order to make everyone feel loved, Eric volunteered to be that first friend. On MySpace you have Tom, on MyBlogLog you have Eric. In fact, we call him our Tom around here. Oddly enough, we’ve had a small percentage of people de-friend him. It keeps him up at night.

Q. Now that Yahoo acquired MyBlogLog; how has this affected MyBlogLog?

Well, so far the whole experience has been great. There are some great people here and we also love our shiny new Yahoo servers.

Q. Why do you think Yahoo purchased MyBlogLog?
Likely they saw value in what we were doing. We agreed

Q. What are MyBlogLog’s future plans?

Well, I can’t go into great detail, but as you already know, we are re-branding and redesigning the site, so that is keeping us fairly busy.

Q. Congratulations MyBlogLog has been selected as a Finalist in WebWare. What do you think about it and Why you think this happened?

Anytime you build a community that grows and grows, you attract attention. Thankfully we have a number of members who just love us, and they are great champions of MyBlogLog.

Q. Would you like to add anything else?

I’d just like to invite anyone with suggestions to add them to our suggestion board here: http://suggestions.yahoo.com/?prop=mybloglog
And if you have fun helping other MyBlogLog users, I’d like to invite them to join our Users Helping Users group here:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/mybloglog/

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