Tools Panel: Chris Cree (moderator) with MyBlogLog, Evoca, TheGoodBlogs

Here is Chris Cree’s blog.

mybloglog_logo.pngMyBlogLog: (Robyn) huge growth happened when the released the widget – their goal is to grow the size and depth of the community. Robyn is the community manager.

evoca logoEvoca: (Diego) the vision is to help bloggers, and the intimate users post their actual voice online. Uses several tools, simplest is the telephone.

The Good BlogsTheGoodBlogs: (Vernon) many in the room are already involved with TheGoodBlogs. Wanted to do this his way as opposed to the VC route, and he seems to understand the blog culture better than a funder would.

How do you create a community? Know who is reading your blog (this is why MyBlogLog is so cool) and then reach out to these people.

Evoca is providing tools to really allow you to bring more personality or another dimension into your blog. Also, it allows you to get feeback (with your reader’s voice) back to you (I think)

Robyn (what are the biggest challenges facing bloggers today): continuing to stay relevent (easy to go to TechMeme and get lots of traffic) but are you really going to stay important? And give “absolutely no value” to the rest of the community?

Diego (can you share some of the cool stuff we can look forward to): include working with the Barack Obama (sp?) campaign to strengthen their cause or message to allow voters (american people) to call in and tell them what they think (which is cool, compared to letters and all that stuff). Also looking at school relationships to reach out to their students, a relationship with Skype, and other stuff (TypePad) to make it easier to add voice to their blog.

Vernon (what keeps you up at night?): what is the next big thing… and where is the blogging industry headed? What is it going to look at in 5 years from now? Think about where blogger was at 5-6 years ago. It’s a place to put text and video now, but think about (wonder where) it’s headed. Are we going to become a MySpace, or are we all going to meet half way somewhere? he wants comments/e-mails on where this is headed.

Robyn (on what is the most important thing she can communicate to us?): 1. let us know what the problems are, we really really want to know!, 2. contact us whenever you want (right now she is customer service and responds very quickly) but the biggest thing to let us know is that MyBlogLog exists because of US, the bloggers that use the widget! They are very easy going, they are bloggers, geeks, and blog readers, shoot them an e-mail with any suggestions (they covet all suggestions) robyn@mybloglog.com.

Diego (same question): same thing, very impt to hear from the users, success stories (like the guy that recorded a conversation in an elevator), and please give the tool a try.

Vernon (same question): answer: You belong here. A lot of people treat blogsthe same way he treats planting – wants it to be planted one day and a tree the next! It really takes 18 months to get it up and thriving – for the avg person. Be more patient about what you, it will come and you are a terrific blogger (and cherish every one of you). There is this 18 month rule though, give yourself 18 months and you will know whether you succeed or not. And, you build communities one post at a time! 2 clicks a day (or 2 new people a day) is about 700 new people each year! And then you can get to the hockey-stick growth :p

— little bit of discussion on what happens after the politician is voted in (will they still use it)

Q: (from Tony nest) hug mybloglog fan – for business bloggers, they don’t like having the half-naked women on their… can we select categories of this? Or ratings… ?? A: they are figuring out how to do this, so you can filter on your blog AND people can rate/flag them. She said that she goes through every single picture (new pics?) to delete them out. They allow racy avatars but doesn’t want to see really bad stuff.

comment for vernon (tony nest) – you can actually test headlines, and then based on the traffic you get figure out if it is good or not.

Q: can we see a sneak peak of something over the next 6 months? Is there anything awesome? A: redesigning the site, rebranding the name. It’s not just for bloggers… lots of people come there don’t even have a blog. There are lots of ideas that people that have sent in that are on this list and there are great ideas that are being implemented now — there is a widget 2.0 that is coming out in the next couple of months.

1 thought on “Tools Panel: Chris Cree (moderator) with MyBlogLog, Evoca, TheGoodBlogs

  1. Pingback: Practical Blogging » Blog Archive » links for 2007-05-15

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