Since rumours of one company being purchased by another fly around the blogosphere like pigeons in a park, I opted not to put much credence in the MyBlogLog-Yahoo rumours earlier today.? Well, I caught on Techmeme earlier this evening that Forbes was reporting that the deal was done (interesting to note it's on their special CES coverage section).? From the article:
The Internet portal has purchased Mybloglog.com, an Orlando, Fla.-based website that enables readers of web pages to leave information about themselves, building a social network among fans of such things as News Corp?s MySpace pages, commercial web publications, or personal weblogs, or blogs. Mybloglog also looks at reader behavior inside blogs, like what is being read and where readers go next, delivering information it can sell to web advertisers.
[snip]
The social network is the more valuable thing for future growth, according to both companies. ?The biggest thing in blog search is ego search ? my name, the web sites I love,? says Rafer, who will work for Horowitz, promoting his service to Yahoo?s many properties. ?People search Google and Wikipedia for information; with blogs, people look for cool things and serendipity.? And, by watching what readers look at, and learning overall behaviors, companies like his can sell to advertisers information about what products should be advertised where.
I'm torn about this.? I'm torn for lots of reasons.? First, I have to be happy for all the folks at MyBlogLog.? They took an okay stats system and made it into something pretty interesting (though I still don't really know what to use it for besides adding my friends to my contacts list).? Then I just have to wonder what Yahoo is going to do with the data.? Yeah, they aren't as bad as Pay-Per-Post.? Okay not even in the same league, but I think you can see where I'm going with this.? Again, I'm not assuming Yahoo will do evil, but I know that the wealth of data that the blogs and blog readers generate has tremendous value.
But as I read other people's discussion of the buy out (like Mark's), I got to wonder about what's going to happen to them.? Flickr and del.icio.us are still going strong, but haven't done much really cool lately.? Sure they have more server oomph behind them, but have they innovated lately?? No, not really.
I think that's what is bugging me.? Yeah I have a MyBlogLog profile and have a few blogs on it, but what's going to be cool next?? What will being a part of Yahoo really do for us.? We made Flickr and del.icio.us great.? We made them take off, great technology is forgotten if it doesn't catch on.? So, Yahoo, tell me, what are you going to do with all these great technologies to make our lives better?
More coverage:
- Yodel Anecdotal
- Jeremy Zawodny
- MyBlogLog Blog
- Om Malik … who adds this interesting footnote to his post that I just have to quote:
Footnote: This just might be one of the first few virtual company acquisition. One of the founders lived in Massachusetts, while another called Orlando his home, along with two other developers. Rafer lives in San Francisco. And they met on LinkedIn. Yup, something for our friends on Web Worker Daily to chew on!
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