Tonight I noticed a flaw in MyBlogLog while tracking some of the comments I have made in blogs over the past two days.
MyBlogLog is a bloggers’ community where members can register their blog info, headshots, and other information so, on member blogs, readers and the blog owners can view the MyBlogLog members who visit and comment on blogs.
Essentially, it’s a one stop shop for setting avatars on blog comments, connecting with other blog readers, and tracking who reads your blogs.
I had never signed up for MyBlogLog, but tonight I had reason to. Seems that even though I am not a registered member of MyBlogLog, they are serving a photograph next to their partner blogs that I leave comments on, such as MarketingPilgrim or TechCrunch.
Only one problem with this, the photo MyBlogLog is serving is not mine.
Instead the photo served is of Carsten Cumbrowski, a good friend of mine in the search engine world and contributor to Search Engine Journal. It seems that when Carsten signed up with MyBlogLog, he listed Search Engine Journal as one of the blogs that he authors.
There is no harm in what Carsten has done here, since by contributing to Search Engine Journal he is indeed an author.
The problem with MyBlogLog is however, that I am the owner of SEJ and when I enter www.searchenginejournal.com as my URL in comments on blogs which use MyBlogLog, Carsten’s photo shows up.
So, in order to claim my piece of the MyBlogLog pie I go to register where I can upload my own photo and hopefully claim my own blog. As an idealist, I’m assuming that MyBlogLog should offer blog owners some kind of code for doing so, in the same tradition of Technorati. You know what though, they do not:
This is a pretty major problem with MyBlogLog, as the owner of a blog, I should be able to claim that blog as my own. But judging from the sign up process, there is not a blog verification system for doing so. For a company which is part of the Yahoo family (or soon going to be), such simple verification measures should be a given.
Carsten and I have fixed the problem, but for other blogs and bloggers, and the potential of false communities built around blogs, MyBlogLog may want to look into a more secure form of claiming blogs than raising one’s hand 🙂
