What is MyBlogLog Spam?

By Li Evans

First it was Robert Scoble against Engadget, now we have Jeremy Zwadony on a tirade against Andy Beal.  What's next, Matt Cutts against Rand Fishkin?

update:  Jeremy's updated that post and changed the title to "I overreact sometimes".  Kudos to you Jeremy for admitting your human, just like the rest of us, this is one of the reasons why I like reading your blog. :)

If you don't have any idea what I'm referring too, you can click the links above to find out that Jeremy didn't think Andy's contest to win a Zune (that MP3 player from Microsoft that has the creepy bugs in the ads on Technorati) if you joined his MyBlogLog community was too cool.  In fact Jeremy said that Andy was spamming.  Really - he called what Andy did spam.

Alright, so then how isn't what Shoemoney did, not spam too?  Both ideas are great - they are perfect out of the box thinking of getting people to view your site, one is just rewarding it's readers/community members in a different way.  Andy with the possibility to win a Zune, Shoe with a pretty picture of a girl ("Sex Sells" concept).   For myself - neither was a factor, I joined both communities early on, prior to these neat ideas launched.  But I sit here thinking "how can either be called spam?"

I don't view them as spam in anyway shape or form, especially since Eric from MyBlogLog sanctioned Andy's promotion.  So, just what is spam on MyBlogLog?  How about those people who keep exploiting the "who's visited" widget?  How about those people who leave those comments - "Come visit my website www.mysite.com"  (by the way - MyBlogLog "nofollows" those links folks!), or the "come join my community" messages?

Jeremy, I enjoy reading your blog and normally, you're right on about a lot of things, but this time, you're way off base.  Spam is an unwanted intrusion on a person's time, energy and even space.  You didn't ever see Andy's "Win a Zune" unless you physically - consciously - decided of your own free will to go to his community (one minor exception might be "who's joined what communities"), but its not spam.

So, weigh in - is was Andy's promotion spam(he's since changed the communty avatar), and why do would you clarify it as such if you think it was?  How about Shoe's old community pictures (he's since changed his too)?  What other types of MyBlogLog spam should that team be worrying about?

Comments

[Simon Heseltine]

...and what about Graywolf's new site picture? http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/community/graywolf/

:)

[Li Evans]

Simon - LOL - thanks for pointing that out! too funny!

[Matt Cutts]

"What's next, Matt Cutts against Rand Fishkin?"

What has that scalawag Rand Fishkin been up to now? :)

[cctech]

MBL spam, IMO, is when another member posts a comment in your community for all to see and that comment contains links to something on their blog or in their community. Obviously, the poster hopes that visitors will follow the link and they will get some traffic that way. To me, that is MBL spam. If I am going to post a link in an MBL comment, I make it a private comment.