techne-eikon.com

While I am not a power user of MyBlogLog, I do drop in about once a week or so, and have a look around. Yesterday, I was doing my usual, only to find that I now had to sign in using my Yahoo! id. Problem: I don’t have a Yahoo! id. For that matter, I don’t particularly want a Yahoo! id, and yet if I wanted to get into MyBlogLog, I had to sign up for one. I now have a Yahoo! id…

By contrast, a few months ago when Google acquired Feedburner, I didn’t have to change my log in to match my Google account log in, and the only difference I have noticed so far is that there is a post on the front page telling me that Feedburner had been acquired by Google. Notice the difference: Google let me get on with business with no muss or fuss, whereas Yahoo! insisted,  nay, strong armed me into getting one of their id’s, something I have no use for.

While I can understand Yahoo’s desire to increase their user base, I don’t think that this is the way to go about it. I would have preferred to see an option to sign up for Yahoo!, with perhaps some incentives to do so. For example, when Google took over Feedburner, they made all the Pro features available at no charge to users. Yahoo could do the same with MyBlogLog’s tracking features, some of which cost.

Regardless, this forced sign up has caused me to begin evaluating if MyBlogLog is of sufficient value for me to keep my account there. As I said before, I don’t really use the service, nor have I built a strong community there. While I have discovered some cool blogs while perusing the site, is that enough for me to stay, especially with a strong arm corporation running the show now? Honestly, I’m leaning towards “no”, but I will sleep on it before I decide what to do.

Yahoo should take a lesson from Google, and take a softer approach. Provide killer products and services as supplements to the core business, which in both cases is search. Entice, rather than bully. As Grandma used to say, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.