More Messaging News

At the same time that we rolled out the new layout of the Community Pages, we added one other feature that you will probably love.  Due to popular demand, we have made it possible to send messages to your entire community in one quick step.

By clicking "Message Members", you'll be taken to this screen:

If your community members have chosen to receive email notifications when they receive a message, they'll be notified of your message via email.  Either way, they'll see your message on their profile page when they login again.

Of course, some members may get a little message happy, but again, any spam moderation on this feature is up to you.  Spam is in the eye of the beholder, or something like that, so if you are receiving spam, just leave the person's community by clicking Leave Community on their community's page. 

We hope you enjoy this new messaging feature as well.  Please let us know what you think.

Comments

[ilker -=- The Thinking Blog]

This feature is an invitation to spam.. guess I will need to remove myself from those communities who start using this unnecessarily (and sending messages not in private)!

[Robyn Tippins]

If it does, then the leave community will help them. The good thing is that hopefully we'll begin to an even better Hot Communities area when people leave spammer's communities. :)

[Meg]

Robyn

Can you PLEASE introduce a profile option NOT to receive these mass community messages.

I belong to 918 communities, and do NOT want to receive them.

[Robyn Tippins]

Meg,
You can turn off your email messaging, but the idea is that people join communities of blogs that they read, so most people will like getting messages from the owners of the sites. Of course, if they don't, they can leave the community.

I don't envy you in your task of weeding out the communities that you don't read any longer. 918 is definitely more than one person can handle!

[Renata]

Hi Robyn,

I'm disappointed with MyBlogLog. This is an invitation to Spam...

[Robyn Tippins]

Renata,

Good to see you again :) If you see anyone spamming, just leave their community. You don't have to wait on us to take action on it at all, you can immediately removed them from your contacts. It's better for the members all around.

[Danielle]

I agree with Robyn and Ilker this will be used as a method of spam, but insincere contact adding and joining communities that you don't make an effort to read is also a tad bit spammy. For me it will help weed out contacts and members who abuse the feature. Utilizing it once in a awhile to highlight posts will be very handy to those of us who try to be genuine in our virtual social networking.

Be well and enjoy the day.

[Kanute]

Mine is a mix feeling, on one hand its good to able to send a message to all in your community, on the other hand the fear that it can be abused. I hope we all get a little more responsible.

[Meg]

Robyn

I think people join communities other than just to read that blog. There are many subjects I'm not particularly interested in, but joining a community is my way of validating a blogger's effort, even if it isn't my "cup of tea".

If I think enough of a (blog) community, then I will subscribe to its RSS Feed, and that blogger will have 100% of my attention - thereby negating the need for "community" messages.

Yes, I have turned off email messages, but now the "legitimate" ones will get lost amongst all the "spam" on my profile page and the whole process of culling the messages and leaving communities will take up more time.

I appreciate that you are trying to open up communication channels between community owners and members, but I think you need to provide an easy "opt out of community messages" facility.

[avinash]

Hi Robyn,

Do you have any solution for the people like me who have joined 5000+ communities? The problem is that most of the MyBlogLog members try to promote their communities whenever they get a chance to do so. Are you going to ask to leave communities everytime someone sends spam?

Wouldn't it be better if you guys start to ask everybody not to join any communities at all or even better, not to join MBL at all? Visiting a blog and then joining its community kills our time. Asking like this to leave communities whenever someone sends spam is just not fair. I've noticed that everytime, the MBL team launches an unique *solution that creates new problems*.

Although you have added a cool feature that allows MBL members to send community notifications without too much hassle, you have also built a powerful medium to promote spam @ MBL by providing us MBL members *ZERO* option to ignore such messages before they make their way to our profile pages.

[avinash]

And I just read your reply to Meg that 918 communities is definitely more than one person can handle.

It shows one's lack of patience/time to read so many blogs. There are too many people who track much more feeds/blogs than I'm able to track/month.

MyBlogLog is supposed to be a platform where people can discover new, useful blogs. Tell me that I'm wrong.

It seems like everytime you people are unable to find a strong solution for something, you start insulting your members indirectly by forcing them to join/leave communities when *MBL* wants.

[ilker -=- The Thinking Blog]

I agree with Meg. Back in the day, I joined up to all the communities I found interesting and now I'm a member in 1746 communities!

If something can be abused, people will abuse it.

We should have an option of not getting these mass "spam" or at least all the messages sent out in this fashion should be marked as Private to not target people other than those who are members of the community.

A temporary solution I found to this, other then unjoining communities (btw, this should be easier like 1-click for a short period of time), that is to remove the author from your contacts and use the "display only messages from my contacts" option.

I don't know Robyn. This would be a great feature if you had it from the beginning but after people joined to so many communities (like me), everyone is receiving lots of messages overnight!

HALP!!

[Chase Roper]

I think this feature will be handy. Spammer see everything as an invitation, that's just par for the course. But the positives outweigh the negatives here.

Thanks Guys!

[SpragueD]

This is a brilliant addition. It will require some "housekeeping" on the user's part at first -- because the spammers won't be able to resist -- but should help to turn MBL into a real community building tool after some effort.

[Tsewang Rinzin]

I think this is a great idea. Even Myspace enhanced its messaging system by having this IM feature. But for MBL, this kind of feature is a must. Lets take Community for example, since a lot of people were concerened about this part. Why do we join the community at all? Because that person/blogsite interests us right? Through mass messaging the Community author can notify Community members about any updates or interesting thing happening in his blogsite. If the Community leader sends you a spam or "spam" then you can use the Leave Community button. This will also help weed out the bad Communities that have evolved in MBL somehow.
I wish MBL Good Luk and say thank you for stepping forward to make MBL more joyful.

[Hammer]

Funny thing is you say we're going to love it and based on the comments so far, I'd say that's not the case. I think it sucks.

[Hammer]

What the heck. I just tried to send a private message, the first one I've sent in days, and it tells me hold on, you're being over zealous with your messaging?

[Mark]

I have to agree that this idea needs to be thought out more. Telling us that the solution is to leave their community is a hands-off approach I would not have expected from MBL. You guys have something good here, but to leave us open to spam and tell us to deal with it (essentially) tells me this needs to be thought out more.

Maybe I like that person's community, but the community owner made an error in judgment.

And why did you guys remove the ability to mark such comments as spam?

Please reconsider this. MBL did something about removing the animated avatars (like those "bouncing body part" ones), or maybe the community finally got wise that it was getting annoying. Either way, it made MBL a better place.

[Eric Marcoullier]

Hammer -- that was a bug. It should be fixed now, but it might take 24 hours to recycle and for you to be able to post. Many apologies.

[Hammer]

If you check, everyone of the people that have posted that they like this idea, have very low memberships.

Just saying. ;)

[Andy Beard]

I have started removing myself from the communities of people who have been in my feed reader for 6 months.

This solution destroys the possibilities of using MBL and the future API to create applications that can streamline your online experience.

All those ideas of using personal aggregators of your favorites, or the favorites of your community disappear as soon as people have to reduce their community participation to avoid spam.

Bloggers don't understand things like CAN-SPAM

The fact that I have visited a blog 3 or 4 times and been autojoined (I like that feature) shouldn't give them the right to spam me with their latest iphone giveaway promotion.

Even a thanks and please subscribe to my RSS is commercial use of email.

I don't want to switch off email messages, because some of my readers prefer to use that form of content rather than email or my contact form.

[SpragueD]

Hammer,

Maybe we have very low memberships because we don't try to use MBL as a free marketing tool.

Just saying. ;)

[Robyn Tippins]

This is why I love our members. Some of you love this, and are letting us know, and some of you hate this and are also making your voices heard.

Everyone uses MyBlogLog differently, as Ilker, Avinash, Hammer, Meg and Andy note, and we will take that into account. Thanks for the feedback.

[Mark Laymon]

I like the tool as it makes it easier to contact a larger group of people.

The pros do not out weight the cons that it will be abused. If you have an option to unsubscribe to mass emails, but still be able to access individual emails I would say keep it. But until then I would go back to what you had.

Just my opinion,
Mark

[Carla]

MyBlogLog, where have all the features gone? Will this affect my Google page ranking?