Marshall Kirkpatrick is reporting that Yahoo! will shut down MyBlogLog next year. Well, color me unsurprised. The service has languished for years. I removed it from my site a long time ago. It made me a little sad to do so, but it was just slowing things down and not really "adding value" as they like to say.

It's sad because I was involved in the MyBlogLog acquisition at Yahoo! and believed in what they were doing. I worked to help get the team on board, nag the right people to make sure they got reasonable hardware on which they could grow, interviewed their first post-Yahoo engineer, and made the trek up to the Berkeley office a few times a week to help them transition into Yahoo and work on plans.

I genuinely had high hopes for what MyBlogLog could do both inside and outside of Yahoo. But as I wrote in Watching Yahoo's Transformation:

MyBlogLog has all but died on the vine, right? Is there anyone left of the original team of 5 or 6 engineers still working on it? No, I think it fell victim to Yahoo's larger social strategy. FAIL.

On the one hand, it's sad that our collective time was wasted, but the members of the MyBlogLog team have all gone on to bigger and better things outside of Yahoo. And I suspect everyone involved learned some important lessons along the way.

Posted by jzawodn at December 23, 2009 07:34 AM

Reader Comments
# Joe Zawodny said:

So, is there something else/better out there that provides information on how folks get to and do with my site?

on December 23, 2009 11:41 AM
# 3arabsoft said:

i thank google to bring me here and very thanks to you for the great article
its very helpful to me
happy new year

on December 24, 2009 09:54 AM
# Chad Dickerson said:

Sigh. This was sad indeed and the MBL team had something special. We all know the real story of what happened there (will save it for the book).

on December 24, 2009 11:07 AM
# oxygen sensor said:

Your blog is good. Can you tell original story?@Chad please.
Carry on.

on December 30, 2009 09:33 AM
# ZXT said:

I am not surprised as Yahoo has the tendency to FAIL in their web dealings. Remember Geocities? It was the most popular free web hosting until Yahoo bought it and they kill it slowly and last year they buried it.

on January 10, 2010 07:43 PM
# April said:

I remember using MyBlogLog a couple of years ago and used to enjoy seeing who was visiting my site and also other sites I read. It's a shame to see it go even although I haven't personally been using it much.
April

on January 14, 2010 11:39 AM
# Ian Kennedy said:

I posted a "how to" about what you need to do to export your data from MyBlogLog should Yahoo announce a shutdown.

http://everwas.com/2010/01/how-to-export-your-data-from-mybloglog.html

Includes a python script (written by Manny, a former MBL engineer) that uses the MyBlogLog API to make a local copy of your contacts.

Lessons Learned, Carry On, Look Forward!

Ian Kennedy
Former MyBlogLog Product Manager

on January 19, 2010 06:49 AM
# Dave Pinto said:

When I search for a yahoo group to join on such-and-such a subject, I am always startled by the number of groups which only have 1 member, or maybe 2 or 3 members. Are these not discussion groups? But how can you have any sort of a discussion if there is only one other member?

on January 29, 2010 03:03 PM
# said:

Have you heard of TheBlogFrog.com they offer a recent visitors widget so you can actually see who is looking at your blog. BlogFrog also offers other ways to track your blog presence and how to market your blog. This may be a good alternative if Bloglog shuts down! Check it out at Theblogfrog.com

on February 25, 2010 01:48 PM
# bosch said:

is there any other blog would you recommend? it seems they are having problem on the group or it doesn't have any member yet.

on May 31, 2010 08:14 PM
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