MyBlogLog

I’ve had an account with MyBlogLog for a while now, but it wasn’t before yesterday that I decided to play with it a little bit. So, now I have a proper profile and all my blogs have the “Recent Readers” widget in the sidebar.

MyBlogLog allows us to connect with those who read our blog as well as with bloggers whose blog we read. For those of you who have never heard of MyBlogLog (where have you been?) here’s how it works: you sign up, fill out your profile and add the blog(s) you author. Each time you visit another member’s blog, if they have the widget set up, your profile image will appear in their blog, along with a link to your profile. If the widget is not set up, they will still be able to know you have visited from their control panel – however, you can choose to hide yourself from any particular site if you want.

Each blog has a community that people can join either by choice or automatically after a certain number of visits (defined in the settings). Members can message each other and add people as contacts.

The service also provides statistics, showing where readers came from, what readers viewed and clicked. New users get a 3 day trial of MyBlogLog Pro: realtime, historical, and full daily stats. After the trial period, if you don’t want to upgrade, your account is automatically set as basic – you still get stats, but with limitations.

There are 2 widgets available that you can set up in your blog: the one you see in the sidebar in this blog under “Recent Visitors” called “Recent Readers”, showing MyBlogLog members who visited the blog and another called “Top Links”, showing the most popular links in your blog. (I’m not using this widget here).

I really like MyBlogLog: it’s cool, it’s social and it drives traffic. And… it finally gives me a better way to connect with some of the people who read my blog.