MyBlogLog is the service which lets you add a widget to your blog, which in turns show avatars of the last couple of MyBlogLog users who visited your blog. Each blog has its own MyBlogLog community, and so the idea spreads virally. I have a MyBlogLog widget in my sidebar: I think it’s a nice idea. It’s the only service out there that rewards you for being an avid reader; when you visit your favorite blogs, your avatar shows up on the widget, and so it’s a type of mini-advertising for free.

However, MyBlogLog seems to offer unlimited possibilities for spam and abuse. Looking at it now, I don’t see any TOS or set of rules of what you can’t and cannot do. There was already one clear incident of abuse, but I can see many more possibilities which might not be considered abuse, but definitely fall into the gray area.

Let me explain how MyBlogLog was spammed before. It’s not really hard to set up a script that would visit the top 100 most visited web sites which have a MyBlogLog widget every 5 minutes, which would effectively make your avatar always visible on these sites. Now, combine this with an avatar that says GO TO MYSITE.COM, and you have yourself a free ad on some sites with a lot of traffic. What’s weird is that although the incident mentioned above is one month old, I still don’t see that MyBlogLog did anything about it. What’s worst, fixing it is really simple: make it so that a person’s avatar cannot be shown more than once on a website in an hour. (*note that a similar restriction possibly could be in place right now, however I’ve tested my hypothesis a little bit and I didn’t notice it)

A second example is the 2000 bloggers incident, which was covered widely. You can read about it here and here.

Lastly, I’d like to point out the latest tactics employed by John Chow - he’s offering prizes to people who join his MyBlogLog community. Now, John is a master of pushing the limits of what’s allowed without breaking them, so I’m not suggesting that what he’s doing is breaking any set of rules. However, in my opinion, it breaks the idea of what MyBlogLog should be about. Luring people to join his community with prizes is one step to simply paying them to join. And if you can do that, then it’s not a community any more, it’s an ad farm.

What I’m suggesting here is that MyBlogLog should introduce a strict set of rules of what can and cannot be done with the service. People should not be allowed to use text in avatars. Actively pushing people to join the service should not be allowed (similar to Digg, where openly asking people to Digg your story can lead to a ban). Hacks like this one should be stopped. And generally, much more attention should be given to making the service spam-free, and fair and equal to everyone.