Did Shoemoney Kill MyBlogLog?
I was driving today and some song about death reminded me of MyBlogLog. I never really understood how it would be a meaningful business, what motivated Yahoo to spend $10 million on it, or why so few people noticed how much data MyBlogLog was collecting. So, I stopped playing around with it. Anyways, as I was listening to said song about flaming out, it occured to me that I haven’t heard a damn thing about MyBlogLog since the whole blow-up with Shoemoney in February.
While catching up on the DiscoveryHD replay of Planet Earth (a show that completely justified buying an acre of HDTV screensize, btw) tonight, I decided to see what MyBlogLog has been up to since their PR faux pas. First, Alexa:
Wow, peak #’s thanks to Shoemoney’s banning in February and then flat growth at best after the beatdown. Nothing kills a meteoric rise like a bonehead PR move. At least they did it post-acquisition or that could have cost the founders some serious coin (assuming there is no earn-out).
Ok, so Alexa clearly illustrates that I wasn’t just losing my mind and out of touch. MyBlogLog definitely took a hit. But Alexa is Alexa and that isn’t exactly up to CSI standards, so let’s look for some corroborating traffic data. Here’s the last bit of Compete data, the trailing 45 days growth (or “Velocity” as they call it):
Hmm, I seem to remember from racing that when you have substantially increasing negative velocity it’s because you are on the brakes very, very hard. Ruh roh, MyBlogLog.
Make any assumptions from this that you want, but I have never seen something with so much hype give up the glass jaw so easily.
So, what’s MyBlogLog to do? If I’m them, I pony up the $2500 at ReviewMe and try to reverse the damage of the Shoemoney Effect.
I don’t think Jeremy had too much to do with it since Eric apologized just a few days later on the MBL blog and Jeremy publicly accepted it. I think it’s more a combination of the rise of BumpZee among this niche and the lack of any advances on MBL’s part. The site is still as unappealing and hard to figure out as ever, and I haven’t seen any attempt on their part to continue the momentum.
I don’t think they’ve applied the brakes, but they’ve definitely let off the throttle. This isn’t outer space. You can’t just build up speed and expect to coast forever.
I agree with Shane on the ‘throttle’ thing & bumpzee, but I also think Jeremy probably /did/ have quite an effect. He killed off the brand in the eyes of many of his readers. With most blogs that wouldn’t be a problem, but Jeremy’s readership:
1. is dead-centre for mybloglog’s early target audience
2. includes many influential bloggers
to make a slightly overblown comparison, it’s like the food editor of the new york times turning up at your upcoming manhattan restaurant & finding a rat in his soup. he’s going to tell his friends & his readers. unfortunately, that consists of your target market & several other key influencers of your target market.
I have to admit that there were definitely ways to game mybloglog–and they finally tightened it down a bit. I have to admit, though, that even though they tightened down the adding of friends and adding of communities, the limit of 15 per day is too restrictive.
Before that restriction, those gaming mybloglog were able to add thousands of contacts…and they remain the top listed sites. For the latecomers, because of the 15 per day restriction, there’s no way to “catch up” with them.