Yesterday I had an email in my inbox from MyBlogLog, the social network with some extra nifty features created specifically for bloggers, even though I had previously specifically opted out of receiving “Community Messages” as they call them (perhaps my settings got mixed up when they incorporated Yahoo ID ?). The email was a quick reminder that I should remember to sign up for their Problogger Contest (details at their blog).
Exciting as it sounded, I rushed over there to find the details, only to be severely disappointed when I discovered that it was in fact limited to US citizens. The prizes are certainly great, like a one year premium membership at SEOmoz and a complete blog redesign from RS Designs. But what good is it, when I can’t participate?
Personally, I’ve never seen the purpose behind restrictions like these online, where international borders are completely irrelevant. Sure, there might be some legal efforts in play here, but with the backing of Yahoo, you would expect that the guys over at MBL would be able to construct something that was open everyone, regardless of geographical locations.
Another thing I don’t like about the contest is that the object of it all is to have the fastest growing MyBlogLog community within the period of the contest. It’s an invitation to spam and various black-hat techniques if you ask me.
I think I might start a competition myself here at my blog giving away some awesome prizes just to get some attention, and then leave it in the fine print (which hopefully nobody will read) that the winners have to live on the same block as myself so that I can deliever the prices personally without too much effort, simply because I’m too cheap to pay for the expenses of shipping.
Finally I have to excuse my negative attitude towards this, but I simply find this whole ordeal a bit silly, and I’m somewhat grumpy because I have to spend my Saturday doing a termpaper. That’s the curse of procrastination exemplified!
Lars,
The opt-out of community messaging means that you won’t get emails from the communities that you have joined. If you want to remove yourself from notifications from us, choose ‘email notify: off’.
I know what you mean about the US restrictions. I wrote a little post about it on our blog, mybloglogb.typepad.com, but I agree, I wish it did not have to be that way too.
First of all, thanks for the response. The message I got about the contest has the headline ” New Community Message at MyBlogLog “, which should explain why it can result in irritation. No worries though.
And it’s nice to see that you acknowledge that the geographical limitations can be somewhat frustrating at least