Valleywag started a rumor in November that Yahoo had bought MyBlogLog - Yahoo then denied it and everybody backtracked. Another story popped up on MarketingShift early today, adding a $10 million price tag - that post was quickly pulled, suggesting that it was either incorrect or too early.
As it turns out, they were just a little too early, since Forbes has just confirmed Yahoo’s purchase of MyBlogLog, the Florida-based blog communities service, for $10 million. That price doesn’t come from Yahoo itself, but from “knowledgeable sources”, they say. Bradley Horowitz, VP of product strategy at Yahoo, said that MyBlogLog would remain a separate entity (much like their other social acquisitions) , but you’ll be able to register with your Yahoo ID. The MyBlogLog communities will also be integrated with Flickr and Yahoo Answers, although Forbes isn’t at all clear on what that means. MyBlogLog is currently on 45,000 blogs, according to founder Scott Rafer.
I’m yet to be convinced by MyBlogLog, although it certainly has potential. The issue right now is that it hasn’t really moved beyond the tech crowd (they’re also making inroads into real estate blogs they say), and while you can currently post these widgets to MySpace, it remains to be seen whether they can master that market, which is radically different to serving geeky bloggers.
The people making these purchase decisions, of course, are geek-oriented: Yahoo is unlikely to buy a popular MySpace add-on site, despite the fact that these sites have massive mainstream reach. Their other social acquisitions, Flickr and del.icio.us, also cater to this same tech-savvy market. But I think MyBlogLog could continue its viral growth in other blogosphere verticals if they master one thing: shifting the benefits to the blogger. At the moment, having a MyBlogLog widget seems to be of more benefit to MyBlogLog than you, the blogger, particularly for large blogs. They’re currently experimenting with ways to shift that balance: integrating the community pages into your blog itself and including avatars next to comments. Perhaps they’ll even consider co-branding, so that bloggers can enable more interaction between their existing communities. This may only be necessary for the bigger blogs, however, since small blogs are already likely to gain (rather than squander) traffic by posting a MyBlogLog widget.
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