BLOGGERSUNITE
"United We Stand, Divided We Fall" - Aesop
You don't need me to tell you that the world has its share of major catastrophes and disasters.
The people of Japan are in desperate need of our help & bloggers and other social media participants continue to raise millions of dollars for those in need.
I am grateful to say that BloggersUnite.org, thanks to a large number of bloggers, has been active in raising funds and awareness for those in need.
I am writing to you because there is a story that while it clearly does not rise to the same level of human tragedy, I believe strongly will make a major difference to the future of blogging.
Yahoo! recently announced the imminent shut down of MyBlogLog. While this news has been largely ignored by mainstream media, the event is disturbing because it shuts down a major channel of the blogosphere.
For years now MyBlogLog has been ignored by Yahoo and now they are shutting it down because it doesn't fit within their corporate strategy.
What does a MyBlogLog's closure mean to you?
You may think it doesn't mean anything or even think whether they still exist, or whether you even have heard of them, the truth is that MyBlogLog is a valuable blogging network that distributes tens of millions of visitors to blogs each year.
Yahoo! has shown no respect to bloggers through ought its 4 year ownership of the site. Once again they are failing to follow through on promises and responsibilities to bloggers. Perhaps Yahoo believes it has no responsibility to bloggers.
The closure of MyBlogLog represents a lack of respect to bloggers who have built tens of thousands of communities on the network and spent countless hours adding MyBlogLog widgets to their blogs
Yahoo! has made no attempt to dispose of MyBlogLog, yet it represents an important channel of distribution for blogs.
Why you should care?
BloggersUnite.org and BlogCatalog are ready, willing and able to take over MyBlogLog and turn MyBlogLog into a valuable tool for bloggers and blog readers. We shared our interest with Yahoo over a year ago to do this. Yahoo ignored our requests to talk to them, we had a brief conversation, they wanted to know our strategy for making the site more valuable and because we refused, their communications with us ended.
So, what difference will it make if I join this event?
The more members we have on BloggersUnite.org the greater the positive impact we can make to the world. A combination of BloggersUnite + MyBlogLog + BlogCatalog is "The Right Thing."
To-date, together with your help we have saved lives, made material differences in the lives of school kids, raised money for Haiti, helped build clean water wells in Africa, worked with the CDC to raise awareness about STDs, united refugees with their families, worked with Aids.gov to harness the power of the blogosphere on AIDS Awareness Day and we had hundreds of thousand of bloggers unite on Bloggers for Good Day; where bloggers from BloggersUnite were featured on CNN doing good deeds.
It makes little sense when people in this world are starving and dying because they lack clean water that Yahoo, one of the largest technology companies in the USA, would shut down an asset that has value.
Why not sell it and give the money to a charity? Their site has value. As Warren Buffet says, "stupid in small things, stupid in big." I humbly ask that you please unite with thousands of other bloggers and explain to Yahoo management what would be the "right thing" to do or ad an Action Badge to your blog, or perhaps both.
To do this please click BloggersUnite because unlike Yahoo we are fully aware that when you combine your voice with the voice of other bloggers, that there is no greater force for good in the world today.
Best,
Antony Berkman
BloggersUnite for Good
