The MyBlogLog Blog The source for all things MyBlogLog.

Update on MyBlogLog

The YDN blog has an update on the future of MyBlogLog. Please take a look.

Robyn Tippins

Signing off. Peace, Out

Some of you have already heard but last Friday was my last day with Yahoo and the MyBlogLog team. An opportunity to point myself in a new direction came my way that was just to compelling to pass up. I want to thank you all for your support during my last year and a half with MyBlogLog.
I have had a blast learning from you and it's been amazing experience working with the MyBlogLog team. They are a rare mix of roll-up-your-sleeves-and-just-get-it-done super-brains that have been cranking out new and innovative features on such a regular basis that constantly exceeds expectations. You guys are rock stars.

I am riding off into the sunset but the product is in good hands.

Tilly, our ever bubbly Community Manager, will continue to be your regularly scheduled hostess for all things MyBlogLog. She's been hard at work bringing the Yahoo Customer Care folks up to speed on how we do things so that she can have a little help from people that truly can help.

Todd will take the tiller of the good ship MBL which should be second nature to him as he was one of the blokes who dreamed up this whole thing in the beginning.

There are some really cool things in the queue, some still on the drawing board, others tucked away on dev servers where they are incubating. In case you haven't noticed, the market has gone haywire so many things are in a holding pattern until the team is allowed to staff up again to fully support what they've built. I won't steal Tilly's thunder as she's itching to introduce these new features herself but I hope, as a customer of MyBlogLog, that these new features come to light sooner rather than later.

So see you all around. I'll still be hanging out on MyBlogLog but as a fellow member, not one of the inner circle.

MyBlogLog is Hiring

Do you like seeing your handiwork featured on hundreds of thousands of blogs? Do you thrive off discovering the shared insights of a distributed global network of voracious blog readers? Are you interested in crafting a UI that will help our members make sense of the thousands of tweets, photos, music tracks, and web links that they share with the world? Did you enjoy connect-a-dot drawings as a kid and seeing patterns emerge from the chaos? More importantly, did you color outside the lines?

We're looking for a few hotshot front end engineers help us build the next generation, social analytics dashboard. We're a small, rapid deployment team operating within the larger Yahoo! organization that gets things done. Shred a Photoshop file, wireframe in CSS, bolt on distributed web services - idea on Monday, production by Thursday, this is us.

The position is based in downtown San Francisco.

Responsibilities include:

* Coding and testing new PHP/MySQL applications
* Architecting, coding and testing new JavaScript based site widgets
* Testing and improving existing MyBlogLog sites and widgets

Minimum Job Qualifications:

* 5+ years experience in PHP/MySQL development
* 4+ years experience JavaScript/DOM programming
* Strong knowledge of security best practices.
* Strong work ethic and desire to help contribute to the future success of MyBlogLog

Preferred Job Qualifications:

* Entrepreneurial spirit to run in a startup within a larger organization
* Experience in agile, test-driven software development
* A passion for emerging technology

Software Development Engineer
Senior Software Development Engineer

@MyBlogLog on Twitter

MyBlogLog is about connecting to people, where ever they may be. When we took a look at the number of you who have added your twitter account to your profile, it was obvious that this was an important channel for communication. We all have our own accounts but we felt it's important to have a unified voice for the product.

To let you know we're here, we've added a script to follow everyone that adds their twitter account to their MyBlogLog profile. Some have wondered if we're a bot but I assure you, it's nothing that fancy. Just a few blokes trying a little experiment.

You can follow us on twitter.com/mybloglog for occasional updates. We'll use this channel to let you know when we've got something special to announce or the occasional tidbit or shout out. We'll also reserve this as a Bat Phone should something go wonky on the site and we need to keep you posted.

All of us at MyBlogLog HQ will be watching this account if any of you want to contact us via this channel. We'll do our best to get back to you but I can't promise immediate responses (we do sleep sometimes) but if you have a quick question or comment, try us out.

As always, if you have a detailed question, please check our FAQs first or the Contact form where we'll be more disciplined about getting back to you.

See you on the 140-character web!

Are you worthy?

photo by mariachily

Yes, the rumors are true. MyBlogLog has been working on an API. The team has been hard at work and now we're ready to have some folks check it out.

We're going to remain an invite-only beta for the time being but if you're a tinkerer and are interested in giving us some feedback, please sign up for the beta and describe your application. When we launch, we'd like to do a bit of a splash and feature the best apps on stage at an upcoming tech event.

Some of the things you can do include:

• get all the websites associated with a particular
  tag
• get all the members' contacts on
  MyBlogLog
• lookup by ID on a service such as flickr or twitter and
  find that user's profile on MyBlogLog-
  get a member's profile data including sites authored, tags,
  and identities on other sites

Farewell (we’re hiring!)

It is with great regret that I have to write this, but December 1st is my last day here at MyBlogLog.  I'm moving to a different team here at Yahoo! 

I will miss all of you very much, and being your Community Manager has truly been a rewarding experience.  I was a big MyBlogLog fan before I came on board here and despite my departure, I'll still remain a huge MBL fan. In the meantime, the collective MyBlogLog team will be holding down the fort but I encourage you to take advantage of several resources should you need help with anything:

• MyBlogLog Help Pages
• Community Guidelines
• Widget Installation Tutorials
• Yahoo ID migration FAQ
• MyBlogLog on Yahoo! Groups
• This here blog
• If you can't find what you need, the best way to contact us for help is via the help form

You can find me over in nerd-dom at Yahoo! Platforms.  My new official title is crazy long, but here goes:

Product Manager, Developer Tools Yahoo! Platforms

I'm excited to get back to my roots with my new job focusing on the developer community, but I will miss this team and all of you, fiercely.  I still can't believe they pay people to have this much fun in a job. If any of you are interested in applying for the position of Community Manager and are willing to relocate (the position is based in San Francisco), send Ian Kennedy an email (subject: Community Manager) with your qualifications.

Anyhoo, I've got to get back to work, but I wanted to tell all of you the news.

US Residents Only: Yeah, Not Fair At All

We are so sorry that we can not do a world-encompassing contest.  I've read your comments and I agree that it chafes.  Our percentage of non-US users is way higher than our percentage of US users and in a perfect world, all of you international users *deserve* a shot at this.  However, we are not yet technically 'internationalized' and for now promotions of this sort, where there is any monetary value, really have to be US only. 

Don't lose hope though.  If you are not a US citizen, and you qualify otherwise as the winner, we will still make sure you are promoted adequately.  Heck yeah, you deserve it! 

Go Grab Your Email Signature

Ever wanted an email signature?  You can grab one now in your Edit Profile area.

There are even instructions for a few of the major email platforms.  Please let us know how you like it!

Yahoo! IDs – Another Milestone For MyBlogLog

After weeks of warnings, the Bay Bridge, that connects the East Bay (where I live) with San Francisco, was closed for four days this weekend.  They spent days cutting out an old section and seamlessly replacing that section with a more stable portion of bridge, durable enough to stand up to a San Francisco earthquake.  When Ian and I were talking today, we realized that the situation we were experiencing here in our office was similar.

Our engineers have spent the last few weeks hunched over their terminals with the sole goal of integrating Yahoo! IDs with our MyBlogLog logins.  With no service outages and no adverse effects to our customers in that time, they've built a new road for our logins, that we can just 'jump over to' in the next few days.  You can't imagine how proud we are of our spectacular geeks.  (sniff)

So, without further beating around the bush, I want to let you know that later this week we will be merging all MyBlogLog accounts with their owner’s Yahoo! accounts.  We are doing this to ease login issues here at MyBlogLog (almost 20 hours of my time each week) and because it will greatly increase the integration possibilities for MyBlogLog with other Yahoo! properties.

The only bugger is that you will have to re-upload your avatar image (groan).  We’re going to be using the Yahoo! image uploader so it’s imperative that we save a larger, higher resolution image from each of our members.  The benefits, even above having an easier image upload tool, are that your images will not only look better, but will load faster (Hooyah! even speedier Recent Reader widgets!).  And, since each of the new uploads will be eyed by a customer service agent, you will see fewer 'racy' images on avatars.  Could this get any better?  But wait, there's more... 

Now you can choose to keep your current name, use your Yahoo! name or even change your screen name completely.  And, no longer can only one person be a name.  If you want to be Sam, regardless of whether or not there is already a Sam, you can still be Sam.  Nicknames can be changed at will, and nicknames, just like in real life, can be shared by many people.  No more 'Change Screen Name Verified nonsense...  Reinvent yourself as often as you like!

In all seriousness, the migration should be relatively painless, but we do expect some snags.  If you have any questions or if problems arise, we’ll be here to help via customer service.  If you can’t find the answer on the Help pages, please don’t hesitate to email customer service. 

Thanks for your patience while we are improving.  The end result will be a better MyBlogLog.

Say Goodbye To Alexa Redirects

This will affect only a small portion of our users, less than 1% of our users, .13% to be exact, but we still wanted to post this to the community at large.  We are stripping all Alexa redirects so that each community using an Alexa redirect as their Url will now instead point to the blog in question.

We think this makes more sense for members who want to see what your actual url is and it's better for you from an SEO standpoint anyway.