ClappingTree’s Web 2.0

See also discussion with David Tosh on EduSpaces.net.

And 3 reasons not to:

1. Fake thumbnail images that diminish the professional appearance of your blog.

2. Abusers of the system that use MyBlogLog to distribute irrelevant links to their sites.

3. Being tracked from site to site and having your behavior and interests sold to the highest bidder.

Yeah, I’m a buzz kill

Marios – I think you have a good point about the thumbnail issue. Some thumbnails may be considered inappropriate for certain types of sites and MyBlogLog doesn’t permit a way to filter these out.

Thanks, Marios and Robert, for pointing out the thumbnail issue. Now that you mention this, I did notice some unsavory ones in some blogs.

Marios, could you elaborate on point 2? How can abusers use MyBlogLog to distribute irrelevant links to their sites?

As for point 3, David Tosh mentioned this in EduSpaces.net. If I have a better option, I probably wouldn’t use MyBlogLog. As it is, I think this is for mutual benefit. I have nothing to hide. Anyway, I normally use RSS readers to check updates to blogs. When I surf from site to site, I DO want to be seen — so that the site owners would click on my icon and visit my site in return.

Btw, Robert, I see you’re a MyBlogLog user too. You don’t display the widget on your blog though. Do you still intend to continue to be a user?

JK,

One technique is to have a bunch of browser windows open with blog sites loaded. These windows are set to refresh regularly so that a specific user’s thumbnail and link always appear in the MBL widget. These people aren’t reading your blog, they’re just using the blog sites for free advertising. I’m sure there are programmatic ways to accomplish this.

There’s another technique involving “clicking back and forth” to improve your popularity which gets your thumbnail and link to appear.

Hey JK – I’m somewhat undecided as to the use of the display widget. I’m still active with MyBlogLog but recently removed the tracking jscript because of two concerns. First, there is some question as to possible Adsense violation. Second, I found that it was noticeably slowing down site load. I haven’t given up on the idea yet though. I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts on the matter.

Good reasons, i am sure there is plenty more as well, they are such a good blog tool…