MyBlogLog: Another Great Idea

A while back I had a discussion with a friend who felt that all the good business ideas had been taken already. When he said this I laughed and rebutted that just because neither of us had any ideas didn't mean there weren't any left. And sure enough, I've recently come across yet another big dollar idea that seems so obvious in hindsight.

MyBlogLog is a relatively new service that connects bloggers with each other. The best feature that I've seen is the use of small images which bloggers can have configured to appear on their site whenever a registered visitor stops by. For most bloggers, having their picture and web site link appear on someone else's web site makes for a pretty compelling reason to visit blogs that goes above and beyond any interest in the blog's content. It strokes the ego, but also provides a form of advertising. This is a more legitimate tactic than engaging in referrer spam.

The MyBlogLog folks have struck gold with their viral marketing efforts. As far as I can tell, they're not actively advertising, but rather letting bloggers promote the service for them. Since July 2006 when the service launched 45,000 blogs have signed up to use the service and 33,000 bloggers have uploaded photos and/or provided a profile of themselves. While that number may not be too impressive, it bears pointing out that Yahoo has scooped up the company for a reported $10 million. Wow!

Bradley Horowitz, vice president of product strategy at Yahoo, said MyBlogLog will one day provide insight in to its users. By watching what readers look at, and learning overall behaviors, companies such as Yahoo will be able "sell to advertisers information about what products should be advertised where." That's impressive forward-thinking from a company that has recently been under attack for spreading itself too thin. It'll be interesting to see how things play out and what the other big players decide to do since no good idea goes uncopied.