MyBlogLog started this for bloggers in a big way. It can go much deeper.
I was visiting the kickapps office last week in New York and they are on to something big. I think Wordpress, Google Blogger and Typepad could be the real launching pad for communities of the future.
If Wordpress were to roll out kickapps feature set within their software, the real community building could start and get viral from the outside in (or inside out ) .
My friend Bijan at Spark Capital was an investor in kickapps and I am excited to see what they create.
What a great trend unfolding here in social networking and community building on the net. Mucho money to be made here despite the noise. The winners will be gigantic.
‘Le Tour’, the boy’s annual 3 day hockey trip to Montreal (from Toronto) was a fantastic time. I see friends that I have known most of my life, but now see once a year. The conversation picks up from where we left off exactly a year ago. We actually look forward to the 7 hour bus ride. Just meeting at the rink to play hockey would kill the whole event.
A community is a powerful thing.
I miss my community in Toronto. I have my family and oldest best friends that live there. I have a huge amount of time invested. The good news is the give back. Each time I return to the community, I feel rejuvenated as I see familiar faces and fall easily back onto the community routine. As big a community as I have in Toronto, little changes.
In the internet world, communities are the buzzword but so few have really developed. It’s a combination of time and distance. It is hard to speed up time, but everyday that ticks by helps. The distance issue is being solved with blogs and wicked internet tools like Wordpress and MyBlogLog.
On the internet, I have used MyBlogLog to build a small community around my blog. I see the familiar faces and can quickly meet the new faces.
When I visit other blogs that I like (I do not use RSS), I see some familiar faces and some that have never frequented my blog (their faces are familiar to that blog).
If I were to go on a golf or hockey trip with the top 20 readers of my blog that I have not met, it would not be like we were meeting for the first time, even though most would be from differnet cities, even countries, it would be energized and people could fall into good conversation right away as if they were old friends.
That’s power.
It makes me feel like we are so early in this revolution of blogging and the more we invest the more we will get back – finally. Some amazing things are starting to get done with internet communities but it is just getting started. The leverage one should be able to achieve on the internet is both exciting and daunting.
Now there are more reasons for individuals to join and network without having the inferiority complex of not having a blog.
There is no doubt that Yahoo is going to be a player in social search with moves like this. I have met some great people on MyBlogLog and there are no bounds to what can be done with Yahoo’s web 2.0 properties.
I am going to keep adding Yahoo on weakness until they prove (they may ) that they can’t integrate things.
Yahoo Finance holds huge promise for some better social spin.
I can’t get social search off my mind and I miss my family – bad.
I just had an extremely exhilirating, very long day and am trying to wind down.
I am still bummed about MacWorld and missing the opportunity to hook up with some San Francisco friends. It has been all New York for 6 months.
The red eye to New York was absolutely brutal. Bad dosage of Ambien and a middle seat. New York is absolutley freezing – take that Gore!
I am very disconnected from the stock market and I feel deprived and lonely at some level, but when you are not 100 percent focused on the stock market, it pays to do little. I read Trader Mike and FLY and the rest of my blogroll and stick to my trends – despite the trading thoughts here and there.
I have been thinking more and more about Yahoo since my post about getting long again and it is amazing how strong I feel about a small acquisition like MyBlogLog potentially reinvigorating a brand. Social search is still a wide open frontier and the book has NOT been written on winners and losers. Yahoo has a WAR chest of power in social search opportunities.
I was checking out the faces on my blog tonight (courtesy of MyBlogLog) and saw that Bradley Horowitz had dropped by. He could have been here for 1 secong or 30 minutes. Not the point at the moment. It’s he was here and he is not hiding and THAT’S COOL at so many levels. MyBlogLog “turns on the lights” as he mentions in a blog post. I like that analogy and hope Yahoo follows through on that simple thought.
I will wind up the night with a SOCIAL NETWORKING TIP. If you are going to go so far as to join a social network – stick your FACE on it. I love all my readers and feel I know them, but I am not Carnac. Let me know who the f#$ck you are already. It’s cute to have a litte animation or animal or logo as your persona – for about 30 seconds. Don’t be a fool. If you are going to be part of a network – JUMP IN!
UPDATE – TechCrunch is now reporting that Yahoo is denying the deal. Who knows. Still cancelling the Porsche .
Update: One of Yahoo’s PR firms, OutkastPR, emailed us to say that this story is innacurate, and that Yahoo has not acquired MyBlogLog. We dug a little deeper with some insiders and it appears that Yahoo and MyBlogLog are in very early acquisistion discussions, and nothing more. Founder Scott Rafer was completely silent when asked about the rumors today – suggesting he didn’t mind getting all the press attention.
Bummer – for me .
I have long offered my money to Eric, Scott and Todd over at MyBlogLog to take as an investment.
In my face!
I love this service and have written about it often. Congrats to them. Nice deal for everybody. A little nervous that Yahoo will screw this viral baby up, but for now I am sticking with the service as Eric will not let me down.
Now I have to cancel that Porsche I ordered and start working again.
) .
