The MyBlogLog Blog The source for all things MyBlogLog.

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

It was only a year and change ago that Scott Rafer emailed me out of the blue and said "this stats thing you have is pretty cool, and I think we can do something really amazing with it -- you interested?"  And now here we are, sitting in Yahoo! offices with plans for conquering the world.  He knew what he was talking about.

When we were acquired, Scott was asked to stay on board and guide us through the transition.  Now that we're on Yahoo! hardware and deep into integration with Y! and external services, he has completed his mission and is moving on.  I speak for the entire team when I say that it has been an honor and a privilege to work with Scott for the last fifteen months.  Enjoy your honeymoon, bro -- I wish you nothing but happiness and can't wait to hook up when you get back.

Jet Lagged But Loving MyBlogLog

As some of you have heard, I've
just joined the staff of MyBlogLog as the Community Manager.

I couldn't be more excited to work:

1.  In this position

Community is really my passion.  For the last 9 years I've had fun doing
all sorts of things, from gaming to media, and while that's been fun,
community is what has always kept me going.

2.  At this company

MyBlogLog has one of the coolest products I've seen in this iteration of
Web 2.0.  I've been a loyal user since summer of last year and have just
really enjoyed the widget, the community and the stats, but I never
really considered working here until I saw the all-call for the
position.  Gosh I'm glad I read my feeds that day, huh?

3.  With these great people

The people here are all so smart and fun (not to mention rock
aficionados), that thus far coming to work has been something I've
looked forward to doing.  I mean, we spent lunch yesterday at one of the
Yahoo Cafes watching videos of 80s cheese music and trying to one-up
each other with useless pop trivia.

That said, I have a full plate here.  I'll be the one answering your
customer service emails, thinking through and developing a comprehensive
FAQ, collaborating on the spam question, and more.  Plus, I'll get to be
lurking around the blogosphere and at conferences, as usual.  But, I
still can't help but think, 'and I get paid for this?'

Thanks again for all your congratulations.  My inbox was bursting with
them this morning and it feels fabulous to be so well regarded by such
great people.  Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

Everyone who is MyBlogLog’s new Community Manager, raise your hand.

Several months ago we put out a call to our members looking for someone
to join the team as our community manager.  Today I am proud to
announce that Robyn Tippins of Sleepy Blogger has taken the job, moved her family across the country and is sitting
next to me (and already kicking a little ass).  I'll leave it to Robyn to
fill you in on her deets, so I want to take moment to let you
know what she'll be doing and how the site will be better for it.

As community manager, Robyn will be splitting her time between customer
service and community outreach.  Initially she'll be spending more of
her time on the customer service, but as she gets systems set up,
she'll be spending more time on the outreach part of the role, and as a
result you'll be seeing a lot of her.

It's no secret that MyBlogLog has some spotty customer service.  If you
catch me at the right time you can get a 12-second response time to
your questions.  But other times, it can take a month or more to hear
back.  We've tried to mitigate this by creating a customer service
autoresponse and FAQ, but neither are great.  Robyn will be taking over
the customer service requests while overseeing the launch of several
services:

• A comprehensive FAQ -- she'll be beefing up the FAQ to better
  answer all of the questions that we get on a regular basis.
• Integration guides -- a service-by-service guide to adding
  MyBlogLog's widgets to your site or blog
• Community bulletin boards -- the best place to get help is from
  other people who have had success with MyBlogLog.  There will be
  sections for tech support, traffic building, promoting your sites and
  more.
• Yahoo! Customer Care integration -- eventually, we're going to
  need more than one person working on customer service and Robyn will
  act as the bridge between MyBlogLog and our parent company in this
  regard.
• Additionally, Robyn will be spearheading changes to the site that cut down on confusion.  For instance, we still get a dozen people
  a day marking themselves as porn when they're not, and Robyn will
  figure out how to better communicate how MyBlogLog works.

In her community outreach capacity, Robyn will be a constant presence on all things MyBlogLog.  She'll be engaging in conversation on community pages at
MyBlogLog.com, posting on the MyBlogLog blog, responding to questions
in the blogosphere and attending and speaking at social media conferences.
Additionally, Robyn and I will continue to chat with you to better
understand what you want from MyBlogLog and how we can make it happen.
For instance, Robyn will be another brain in the Big Spam Debate. 

So that's a lot to digest in one sitting.  And if you think it's tough
to read through it all, imagine what it's like to suddenly be
responsible for it!  So while Robyn is already kicking serious butt on
the customer service tip, don't expect to see a bulletin board on
Monday.  Your patience is greatly appreciated as we
integrate Robyn into the small place that is MyBlogLog and the big
place that is Yahoo!.

If you have questions, please leave a comment in the companion post by
Robyn (right next to this one).

Cheers!
Eric

Jet Lagged But Loving MyBlogLog

As some of you have heard, I've
just joined the staff of MyBlogLog as the Community Manager.

I couldn't be more excited to work:

1.  In this position

Community is really my passion.  For the last 9 years I've had fun doing
all sorts of things, from gaming to media, and while that's been fun,
community is what has always kept me going.

2.  At this company

MyBlogLog has one of the coolest products I've seen in this iteration of
Web 2.0.  I've been a loyal user since summer of last year and have just
really enjoyed the widget, the community and the stats, but I never
really considered working here until I saw the all-call for the
position.  Gosh I'm glad I read my feeds that day, huh?

3.  With these great people

The people here are all so smart and fun (not to mention rock
aficionados), that thus far coming to work has been something I've
looked forward to doing.  I mean, we spent lunch yesterday at one of the
Yahoo Cafes watching videos of 80s cheese music and trying to one-up
each other with useless pop trivia.

That said, I have a full plate here.  I'll be the one answering your
customer service emails, thinking through and developing a comprehensive
FAQ, collaborating on the spam question, and more.  Plus, I'll get to be
lurking around the blogosphere and at conferences, as usual.  But, I
still can't help but think, 'and I get paid for this?'

Thanks again for all your congratulations.  My inbox was bursting with
them this morning and it feels fabulous to be so well regarded by such
great people.  Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

Do you like things that are cool?

A few pieces of coolness at Casa de MyBlogLog:

• We are now on shiny new Yahoo! servers, which means slowdowns should be a thing of the past.  From the moment we switched over the the site ran noticeably faster and I've seen more than one random comment on the web remarking that the widgets are much faster.  Many thanks to Todd, John and Steve (and all the Yahoo! folks who supported us) for the long nights required to make the switchover work so well.  As Todd called out earlier, there's more stuff a poppin' over the next couple of weeks, so give us a shout if something isn't quite right.
• We have started policing community names because the leading punctuation was making the Top 50 tag cloud look like ass.  Thanks to everyone who emailed us about this.
• Zane has a cool new site called MyBlogLoggers.com that aims to make it even easier for MyBlogLog members to chat with one another.  Yes, we *really* need to set up a community bulletin board.  It's coming soon, I swear.
• The MyBlogLog reader rolls are back up for good on the Yahoo! Election Pages.  The CSS conflict was resolved and, oh happy day, the widgets are back.
• Our fabulous new community manager is currently at her second day of Yahoo!'s orientation.  More news later this week!

Let’s Hook up at SXSW!

Heya.  Scott and I are down at SXSW Interactive through Tuesday and we would love to say hello.  If you're interested, text me at 413.687.8098 and we'll find a place to get together.  See you there!

New customer service measures in place

Thanks to everyone who has responded so far to our request for community manager candidates.  I am wicked psyched about all of the great people I'll be chatting with in the next week.  In the meantime, John and Steve have implemented some killer new customer service changes to make the burden easier on me, which results in faster response time for you.

The key update is that we've now posted a list of the top 10 or so questions that people ask along with ways to fix the problem yourself or at least verify that the problem must be handled by the MyBlogLog team.  I've already seen several people successfully use the self help tools and I couldn't be happier.  Nothing like stepping out of the way and  letting people take care of their own shiz.

If you go through the process and can't fix the problem yourself, there are instructions on how to followup and jump to the front of the line.  We love people who are willing to tackle their own problems and we'll treat you like royalty, even if you ultimately need our help.

This list will continue to grow and change over time as we figure out more ways for you to expediently solve basic problems by giving you additional tools.  If you run in to a snag and have an idea of how you could fix it yourself if you just had the right tool, please let me know because we might be able to build it for you!

Seeking: MyBlogLog uber-user for long-term relationship

Things are taking off.  I say that without an ounce of hubris -- MyBlogLog was already going in the right direction and now with Yahoo! at our back, everything is accelerating.  It's heady stuff

We're hiring our first community manager to become a core member of team and a key public face of the service.  This person will own customer service, fixing problems where possible and routing more complicated issues to the development team.  Based on customer emails, the community manager will develop a comprehensive faq, oversee a community-based help system (either a wiki or a bulletin board, you will help us decide) and advise the team on ways to improve MyBlogLog.  Lastly, the community manager be an active and vocal participant in the world inside and outside of MyBlogLog.com, spurring conversations, mediating disputes and just generally building kharma by making the world a better place.

There aren't a lot of formal requirements for this position.  It would be best if you are already in the Bay Area because we want to get this party started.  Previous community management isn't a requirement, but it would damn well move you to the top of the queue.  You just need to be passionate about connecting people and have a strong grasp of the English language. 

Thinking about it, I'm going to take a page out of Union Square Venture's playbook -- if you're our community manager, send me a link to your blog.  This tact netted them the awesome Andrew Parker and I'd be psyched if we had similar results.

Spam, Eggs, and Spam

The Yahoo acquisition raised our profile enough that we're getting attacked by some social spammers, both in terms of friend invitations and widget-hogging. We're working hard on getting the right solutions in place and making sure they are flexible enough to make our ongoing spam-reduction efforts fruitful. Thanks for your patience while we catch up.

Spam, Eggs, and Spam

The Yahoo acquisition raised our profile enough that we're getting attacked by some social spammers, both in terms of friend invitations and widget-hogging. We're working hard on getting the right solutions in place and making sure they are flexible enough to make our ongoing spam-reduction efforts fruitful. Thanks for your patience while we catch up.