So on the recommend of more than one person, I joined Mybloglog to track how few people actually read my blitherings.
First impression was that I love it. It was really simple to use, it gave me useful information etc. I thought the "personal" email that I got from Eric the ceo was very smart and when I logged in for the first time, there was Eric as my first new friend with this friendly message.
Pretty seemless experience and I enjoyed it.
But there are a couple things that kinda freak me out. Now in part my freak out is my own fault. I did something I almost never do and I uploaded a photo to my avatar as I have a personal problem with how I look in photos. But, I noticed everyone else pretty much does. I also noted that many people seem to add real pictures of themselves and if this helps people get to have an idea of who I am (especially because so many people I get in contact with have never met me) then I thought, why the heck not. Time to get comfy with me.
But then the freaky part. I started to see "me" everywhere.
I saw me here on the homepage of mybloglog
And then, I went to visit the 20 sites that I visit every or every other day and realized at some point that for the people that use mybloglog, I actually ended up with that stupid photo on their site too - 
and here....
and I am sure that this is probably good for getting some sort of readership on my blog that no one knows about. As someone who is in marketing maybe I should be ok with all of this.
But really, it just kinda freaks me out. *note to self - read about the service before you use it. *second note to self - log out of everything after you finished using it.....
That's it I can't take it - I am getting rid of that picture and replacing it with a picture of my dog.
Thursday 7 December 2006
The Things I Like About MyBlogLog and The Things That Freak Me Out
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5 comments:
I know what you mean, Leigh. I keep seeing myself in the sidebar MyBlogLog widgets at people's blogs, and sometimes it is kind of jarring. Do I necessarily want them to know that I read their blog? And I notice that plenty of people use pictures of their dogs or cats, or images of Homer Simpson or whatever.
We do have a solution for that, to a certain extent. For the sites where you are not comfortable appearing, just hover over your own face with the mouse. You'll see a little red box with an X in it. Just click the X and you are hidden on that site.
More details here: http://mybloglogb.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/11/manage_your_fac.html
A better solution to the "who's reading my blog and how are they finding me?" question is to use a service like Site Meter. I find it quite interesting to see how people are finding me - in my case, usually Google searches on issues relating to organization theory. Often, however, I get some really interesting clusters of queries that indicate something is happening in the Google zeitgeist. (And, of course, I'm really interested in those folks who specifically search for me!)
Hi Rafer,
Not a bad solution, but should I really have to do the work? Shouldn't there be a centralized 'don't track me' on other people's site invisiblity feature of some sort? I move around pretty fast (I like to pretend I am a race car driver) so having to X myself would start to feel a bit cumbersome if you know what I mean.....
I find this creepy too! Though I love everything else about MyBlogLog. I still have a real pic up (secretly, I like being part of a "posse"), but I do find it odd when I see myself on other people's sites.
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