MyBlogLog Calls Kettle Black

Posted on May 26, 2007
Filed Under Web News |

The Story Breaks

On Thursday Techcrunch editor Michael Arrington broke the story that MyBlogLog was planning that evening to introduce tagging to its social networking system, allowing members of the social networking system to tag other users. One of the tags, however, was a user-applied public tag calling another user a spammer. At this, a howl arose from the locals.

The Back-Pedaling Begins

By Friday MyBlogLog’s community manager Robyn Tippins was performing damage control around a few sites trying to explain that what they meant by Social Media Optimizer was actually spambots, and not real people with networking on their minds at all. But she never rose to the frequent suggestion that she amend her formal post with its ham-fisted designations of what a spammer is.

The Complaints Mount

Marketer Andy Beal made a post objecting to being called a spammer by MyBlogLog, when he, like thousands of other members, was actually trying to help them and himself create a useful network. Beal thought a spammer-reporting tool should at least be private if it was open to everybody to use.

The Confusion Remains Thick

Tippins never quite grasped how confused her semantics were, posting:

“I’m a Social Networker (not a schmoe) so I would never sign off on calling SEOs or SEMs spammers. MyBlogLog loves social networkers, heck we’d be nowhere if people didn’t like to connect!”

This is where MyBlogLog steps right into the decade-long debate about what constitutes a black hat versus a white hat operator in search engine optimization and related promotions. Everyone in the world has an opinion about where the lines are drawn, and it’s an argument that is never won, only lost. So we will leave the nomenclature debate alone, forever.

Danny Sullivan is Irked

Danny Sullivan however, the most respected voice in search engine commentary, was completely annoyed by Tippins’s careless use of terms to describe spammers on MyBlogLog, as well as the proposed solution, which in his view would do nothing to stem the chronic spamming that makes MyBlogLog such a disappointing system currently. Sullivan said:

“there remains no way to allow messages to sit in moderation and the “Report Spam” feature causes an email to be sent to MyBlogLog customer service rather than yanking that user out and putting them in a queue for review.”

He cited with great irritation the amount of work it takes to clean the spam junk out of his own Search Engine Land community at MyBlogLog.

Andy Beard Cuts the Knot

But all this was going nowhere until a second Andy jumped in to cut this Gordian knot and throw away the long tail of rope. Marketer Andy Beard simply tagged himself as a spammer at MyBlogLog, concluding that Robin Tippins was describing him (and most of MyBlogLog’s membership) with her inept categorization.

In one clean move Andy Beard devalued the spammer tag on MyBlogLog, or more accurately he showed that the emperor is naked, and the tag and the thinking behind it dysfunctional, and of no value to the network.

Sigh and Try Again Andy

On the heels of this little coup, Andy Beal thought to summarize events across the Web in a second post, to which Tippins again was drawn like a moth to the flame, but still she seemed to see nothing wrong with her choice of labels, and didn’t hear the simple request to change her words”

“@Robyn - I have no problem with using the term ’schmoe’ as a tag for spam, but why can’t you just go back to the MBL post and remove the suggestion that schmoe means social media optimizer?”

The Kettle Strikes Back

Andy Beal took the tip from Andy Beard and tagged himself as a spammer at MyBlogLog, and then tagged Robyn Tippins also, because she fits the description as well as anybody.

Later on Saturday Danny Sullivan and Andy Beard had a little discussion about tags, which is where Beard was really coming from in the first place, although Sullivan was still upset by MyBlogLog’s presumption at calling the kettle black.

All this while MyBlogLog fills up with junk and spam at one degree of separation from the authentic communities of practice.

As the Holiday Weekend Takes Over

By end of Saturday, nothing was resolved, a dozen people were tagged as spammers at MyBlogLog, Robyn Tippins still hadn’t amended her original post with any kind of update, and the brave new tagging system developed by Yahoo appeared to need stricter governance.

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