What's New with You?

We just refreshed our profiles, re-arranging house in order to make room for the previously announced New with Me feature which now runs down the center of the page. Profiles in the past were pretty static but now they become a dynamic representation of your current activity.

A few things to note:

- if you're looking at someone's profile, you'll see a list of updates from their services
- if you're looking at your own profile, you'll see a collective view of updates from all your contacts
- on any page, you can toggle to the other view

The updates are pulled from public data available from the services you've entered into your MyBlogLog profile. The more services you add, the richer this section will become.

Click around, let us know what you think in the comments below. We're in tweak mode and would love to hear what you say as the look and feel here is something we would like to carry through the rest of the site going forward.

PS. If you're wondering who Saurabh in the profile screenshot is, he's one of the engineers behind New with Me who's currently visiting with us from Bangalore to participate in this launch.

Comments

[Avatar]

i want to ask when the rest of the widgets will be updated with the new look/configuration?

there will be new widgets?

verification will be enabled also in the rest of the widgets, badges and e-mail signature? (as a mark,,etc)

[ilker -=- The Thinking Blog]

I was losing interest in MBL ever since the friendly old team got apart, but this seems like a promising update. Good work.

[Reasonable Robinson]

Some neat developments guys! I like the sidebar widget!

[guido]

I find this New layout simply horrible.

1) Give me the ability to choose what to display in my home. Not sure I care about what other members do. As useless as twitter.

2) On the old page, my profile was displayed in full, now you need to click on "read more". This is pure crap.

3) You need a microscope to see that font.

4) You do not know anymore who tagged you until you click "view/edit" tags. Why?

Bad Bad Bad... I really do not like it.

Guido

[Rick Turoczy]

I know you guys worked hard on this.

I held my tongue when MyBlogLog shifted from pure reporting to "social networking." And I've had to unveil more than my fair share of "new designs" to folks, so I hate to show up and throw up, but...

Given that I use MyBlogLog for statistical information about my blogs and not as a social networking tool (and I would hazard a guess that I am not alone in this regard), it would be really, really nice if we had the option to flip back to "classic" view.

Or, at the very least, please give us something that focuses on the functionality that we actually used to be willing to pay to use. I mean, you do remember that, back in the day, we paid to use the analytics, right?

It's the real-time reporting that makes the service valuable to me. Let's see if we can't get that functionality back, front and center, while still serving some of the other goals you have.

[Ian Kennedy]

@Avatar - the first step is to provide instructions on how to customize the new Recent Reader widget, everyone's been asking about that. Next, we've got a New with Me widget in the works that you'll be hearing about soon. In between we'll be taking a look at other parts of the site to update them to the new look.

@Guido - I'm sorry the new layout isn't an improvement for you. It's a work in progress so based on overall feedback we'll be evolving this over time.

@Rick - no worries, thank you for your comment. You can shortcut right to the stats if you are logged in and have your stats page bookmarked. In the future we hope to be able to expose individual stats via the API so that third parties who are specifically focused on stats can build it into their applications. Dare we say a mobile stats app that you an use on your phone? I think that would be pretty cool.

[Rick Turoczy]

@Ian Thanks for the prompt response. Much appreciated.

I'm excited for the api, as well. That will definitely be the best opportunity to start giving everyone--even grumpy long-time users like me--exactly the functionality they're seeking in the most accessible way for them.

And, again, as much as I am chagrin to admit it, I realize I am not the one around which your development plans revolve. I sincerely hope your changes are well received by the majority of your existing and new users.

[Wendell]

*sigh*

I was really happy with MyBlogLog. This doesn't work for me, because it no longer does the things I joined MBL for. It's not plain and clear - it's crowded and messy. It's not readily visually accessible. It doesn't put me (i.e. "about me") and my blogs front and center. It doesn't give me a quick view of my messages. What does it do? It gives me a Facebook-imitation newsfeed.

Yahoo, who killed off 360 in hopes of floating their Facebook-clone Mash, has Facebook-ized MBL as well.

See ya.

[Lisa]

I'm with Guido. I definitely don't see it as an improvement. The font is way too small. It's too confusing. Please give us the option to revert to the old view. Thanks!

[Sherry]

Can I have the option to switch back to classic view?

I really love that format and this one's a bit too cluttered.

I know the intent for the change, but the freedom of users to choose what they like best is what attracted me to MBL in the first place.

[Shawn Hessinger]

I'm gonna reserve judgement on the new profile pages til the "newness" wear's off. Does seem however that we are moving more toward profile networking than blog networking (by topic). This started with consolidating comment sections for individual blog communities into comment sections for profiles. This is a less valuable approach for anyone trying to find or network blogs by topic.

[Dale]

Well ... I see you got some thumbs-downs here on the new design, but add me to the list of folks that do like it. A lot, actually. It would be good to be able to configure what's shown on both What's New With Me and What's New With My Neighborhood, perhaps something like what Blogcatalog now provides in their Dashboard settings since they rolled out a similar feature.

The only thing that I found odd so far is that the most recent entry on my What's New With Me doesn't appear to be formed correctly. You may have to look at it to understand what I'm seeing, but a text version is below:

afewgoodpens
afewgoodpens posted a blog entry
Links for 2008-02-28 [del.icio.us]
Business Intelligence and Enterprise Reporting - Information BuildersThomas Hawk's Digital Connection: American Photography:...
5 hours ago afewgoodpens.com

The blog entry title is missing and it looks like it has combined the del.icio.us links and the blog entry into one item. The del.icio.us. links are not in a blog post.

The blog entry should reference this:
http://www.afewgoodpens.com/blog/2008/03/01/site-updates-3/

and the del.icio.us links can be seen here:
http://del.icio.us/afewgoodpens

I've recently activated a Feedburner feed for my site, and have been messing with it some, so maybe that has caused some confusion.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Dale

[Thomas L]

Sorry guys, but I do not like the new lay out at all. Would be nice to switch back to the old style.

[Lisa]

Been using it for a day. Still hate it.

[esofthub]

I'm not overly enthusiastic about the new page layout. It seems to be more trouble than it's really worth. When I delete the unwanted messages, it reverts me back to "New with." I have to click on "messages" again, so I can delete the rest of the unwanted messages. All this repetitive clicking is quite annoying, especially if you have several messages to delete. It should not revert me back to "New with" until I decide to go back. The same thing with New With "Me" and "My Neighborhood." My 2cents

[A Week In The Life of A Redhead]

I am with the group that does not like this new lay out and would like the classic view back. This makes Blog catalog a better choice for what I am attempting to do with my blog. I have been working with it in the hopes of having it grow on me ... and the more I work with it the more I hate it. Deleting mass messages is also a pain as every time I delete one, the page flips over to the "New With" page. There is just too much clicking to get where I need or want to be...
sorry guys...
Catherine, the redhead

[Ian Thal]

I like the new layout over all (it's certainly aesthetically pleasing), but I would like to have more control over my privacy settings.

Does everyone need to know that John Doe sent me a friend request on Facebook even if I don't accept the request? I'm not even sure people can tell that from looking at my Facebook page.

Also, the feed from my various sites seems to be rather sporadic.

[Jim L]

I think I'm going to like the "New with me" feature. It doesn't seem to update real well though. For instance, I saved some favorites to delicious and made a blog post this morning, and they haven't shown up yet (some things never show up)? Then I commented on a Flickr photo about an hour ago and it showed up instantly in new with me. It's a bit frustrating, some things show up instantly, some in hours, some in days, some never.

Jim

[Jim L]

I'm still getting updates in "My Neighborhood" from contacts I have removed? Again, doesn't update real well.

Jim

[Yano]

I like seeing the updates on other people's pages...but I don't see it on my own - my own "New with" or the updates of the people in my neighborhood. Not sure what's up with that and support hasn't gotten back to me with a fix.

But if it DID work for me, I'd think it was really cool to see all my updates in one place.

[Ian Kennedy]

Jim - I would position "New with Me/New with My Neighborhood as a service that you browse and not someplace you go for the absolutely very latest. If you want to go for the very latest, we would encourage you to drill down to the source of the content as we're always going to be slower than them.

That said, we'll try to increase updates as possible but are limited by the bandwidth constraints of our partners and ourselves.

As for the updates coming from contacts you have removed, are these updates coming after you've removed them?

Ian

[Jim L]

Ian- That makes sense. I guess the problems I see aren't as much "speed" related as "not working" related. An example- I see other people Stumble websites and it shows up at Mybloglog, but I haven't seen any of my Stumbles show up?

Yes, I am seeing updates from contacts after I have removed them. I will keep an eye on it to see if it keeps happening.

Thanks,
Jim

[Ian Kennedy]

Jim,

Unfortunately we've had to suspend updates from StumbleUpon until we can get preferred access to their feed. We're working on it and I'll add a note once we get it started up again.

Ian

[folkrockgirl]

As a newbie, I can perhaps look at the format with fresh eyes. I do not believe that the layout is too crowded (yet), but the design lacks many of the aesthetics seen in a good web 2.0 service. Nevertheless, I like what MyBlogLog does or is intended to do (The "new with" feature is yet to work at all on my account).

[Scott Schnaars]

Ian, new site looks great. Congrats on the launch. Can't wait to drill down and play with a bit.