I just noticed that TechCrunch’s MyBlogLog community page is different to other MyBlogLog communities.
It’s actually been like this for a month or two (I’m not a regular visitor to their MBL page) and is part of MBL’s Co-Branded Communities alpha test.
What are the differences between Co-Branded and Normal MyBlog Logs?
I’m still waiting on an official response from MyBlogLog but here’s how they look different from standard MyBlogLog communities (here are some screen caps of TechCrunch’s community page and ProBlogger’s to compare – click to enlarge).
So lets start at the top of TC’s page – The first change is obviously that the TechCrunch MBL community is on their own domain. They have a MyBlogLog bar at the top with different options linking to the co-branded community page, the user’s MyBlogLog page, the ‘all communities’ page and the ‘all members’ pages.
They also have the TechCrunch logo and navigation/menubar embedded into the page, custom coloring of different elements of the page as well as an extra sidebar which contains TC’s sponsors.
Apart from this the functionality of the pages are pretty much the same (although customized).
My hope with MyBlogLog is that it’ll continue to add new features to it. This sort of co-branded option makes a lot of sense to me. The more integrated it can look and feel with the rest of a blog the better. Co-branded communities will help drive traffic back to the blog itself – which makes it more useful to bloggers – however I want to see more!
ShoeMoney recently wrote a list of MyBlogLog features he’d love to see added:
- Give me the option to not allow links in comments on my sections.
- Allow me to moderate comments on my sections.
- Implement a social voting system on comments and thresholds for negative votes so people are removed when they get to many negatives.
- On my page show me the last time a person visited in addition to the last visitors.
- by default make me moderate friends.
- give me the option to only let friends comment on my community.
- Fix your report spam so it doesn’t send you a email.
- Set thresholds on how many friends a user can add in one day.
- Set thresholds on how many comments a spammer person can leave in a given time.
- Grab real screen shots use alexa or some service to grab screen shot thumbs.
There’s some good ideas there. I wrote on his his post that I’d love to be able to highlight key parts of my blog (co-branded communities seems to offer this) and I’d love to be able to have threaded comments rather than just a big long list of people leaving messages (most seem to be ‘great job – look at my blog type ones).
What features would you love to see MyBlogLog add? What would make it more useful to you?
