There is commotion floating around the net that MyBlogLog will cease to exist next year (2010) January. According to ReadWriteWeb and Search engine land, “sources closed to project” said Yahoo will shut down MyBlogLog next month. Oh! That means just less than 30 days, and no one knows? That’s disappointing! I understand MyBlogLog isn’t hotshot it used to be, but still a significant amount of blogger does use it. It’s been 5 years since MyBlogLog started putting visitors’ faces and profile link on the blog/site.

Those who are not well aware, MyBlogLog is a social network for the blogger community that is based in part on interactions facilitated by a popular web widget that many members install on their blog. Bloggers sign up for free accounts on MyBlogLog and can initiate a blog community for one or more blogs they author. Bloggers can then display widgets on their sites which show MyBlogLog online community members who have recently visited their page. MyBlogLog was originally developed by Cloudspace— an Orlando, Florida web applications development shop. It’s used to be very popular and looked full of potential. But after Yahoo acquired it on 2007 for more than 10 million dollars and with over 45,000 blogs subscribed at the time, things started to fall apart. Yahoo did expand the service a bit, such as- basic analytics data, for example, along with more data via paid accounts. But they failed to live up to the potential.

It’s not MyBlogLog that failed, it’s Yahoo who failed to cultivate it and build a developer ecosystem around it. Such a waste of great potential!

Update: Chris Yeh, head of the Yahoo! Developer Network, has responded over at the YDN blog: “Frankly, it’s no secret within Yahoo! that we’re actively discussing the future of MyBlogLog. However, it’s also true that we have not made any final decisions at this point. Is a shutdown on the table? Sure, that’s an option. But there are other options as well.”