The siteless social network has a new home in Sunnyvale, as Yahoo acquired MyBlogLog for a reported figure of around $10 million.
Bix. Flickr. Delicious. Upcoming.org. Webjay. Konfabulator. Jumpcut. SearchFox. They all have something in common with MyBlogLog: a big check from Yahoo in exchange for the companies.
Yahoo broke a recent string of mobile news announcements to pass about $10 million to $12 million to MyBlogLog. Both TechCrunch and GigaOM chased this story around for some time before it happened.
MyBlogLog is a social network that lives on blogs, mostly. Many sites, like Scott Karp’s Publishing 2.0, display a MyBlogLog widget that shows the names and pictures of recent member visitors to a blog.
Links back from those entries in a MyBlogLog widget connect back to the main site, where a profile page may be viewed. Some sites like TechCrunch may have a branded community in place to display those profiles along with ads as TechCrunch does. Compared to the typical impression of a social networking site like Facebook or MySpace, MyBlogLog is downright minimal in its feature set.
The point is more about seeing what your contacts do online, like where they visit. That could be a double-edged sword. One well-known SEM’s profile showed his communities have at least a passing interest in high-priced call girls and misbehaving cheerleaders, for example.
For Yahoo, the question that will need to be answered is what to do with MyBlogLog and all of their other little purchases. Will Yahoo emerge from 2007 as a mobile powerhouse with tons of tightly integrated social media technology? The Magic 8 Ball says “Cannot predict now.”
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
