Marsh

The latest MyBlogLog (MBL) initiative, community messaging, which was launched sometime today (Sydney time), while in essence a great idea, could have been better executed I believe.

Basically the new facility allows MBL members to send messages, en masse to everyone who is a member of their MBL blog community.

First up, I think the facility to communicate this way, that is, en masse is a great idea. It’s an excellent way, for example, to get news of one-off events affecting your blog, out to those in your community.

Lets say I redesign my website, or hold a contest, both reasonably “one-off” types of events, and something I feel those in my community would be interested in, then this is the way to tell people about it.

After all, why be in someone’s community if you’re not interested in what they are doing? Isn’t the idea of any online community for the sharing of information and ideas?

Am I interested in what the owners of the communities I am part of are doing? You bet! I often look through MBL for links I can post here.

However the idea starts to fall down when people begin posting “news” indiscriminately. For instance, I’ve already received a number of “bulletins” informing me someone has added a new POST to their blog.

That’s not exactly one-off news coming from a BLOG, now is it? If it were an announcement that a blogger had posted their wedding photos, or those of their new born baby, once again, something of a one-off nature, then that would be fine.

But the problem that is starting to arise is the same old one, and there’s rumblings of discontent reverberating around the usually happy place that is MBL.

You see person A’s news is person B’s spam.

Despite being a member of a certain person’s community, and therefore theoretically interested in what they are up to, I’m sorry, news of those wedding photos is spam in my book!

So what’s my answer to this “dilemma”? How do we post news we think is of value to those in our community, without being branded a spammer?

It could work like this.

Each MBL member can post announcements on their blog community page. A feed then goes out to the members of that community, who see a bulletin box on their MBL homepage, showing maybe the last ten “announcements”, in a truncated form, from the many and various communities they are part of.

If the announcement headline takes their fancy, they can then click through to the respective member’s homepage, at their own volition, and see the bulletin in full.

This is win/win (expect for the developers who would have to make it happen ;). I can post whatever announcement I want, you can read whatever of my announcements you want.

And there you are. What do you think?