Le blog de Vanina Delobelle

Scott Rafer, pour ceux qui ne le connaissent pas, c’est un des fondateurs de Mybloglog, ce service qui présente les petites frimousses des lecteurs des blogs. Mybloglog, c’est aussi un conte de fée, un exemple, pour beaucoup de fondateurs de start-up qui rêveraient d’une telle réussite. En effet, ils ont fait fort je dois dire, rachetés par Yahoo peu de temps après le lancement du service.

Comme je sais que Scott parle un peu français je voudrais le remercier vivement de m’avoir accordé cette interview. Je vous la retranscris en l’état aussi autant dire en Anglais !


Could you please tell us how MyblogLog started?
MBL started in January 2005 when Eric called Todd, his best friend from when they were 10yo, and complained that click-reporting still sucked. Together, they figured out how to fix it, launched in 90 days and signed up 14k users in a year. That's when I found them and suggested adding some social features to their already great reporting service.

Looking at web 2.0 behaviors, what were yours regarding the launch of your product?
Eric convinced Todd and me that bloggers and blog readers wanted to look at each others' faces on a widget, to prove that they'd visited the blog, loved it, etc. Web2 is about people and their actions. Eric hit it precisely.

What kind of marketing strategy did you implement to enhance your product functionalities and to make it known?
All we did was blog and comment on other people's blogs. We used our time to be involved with our communities; nothing else.

6 months after its launch MyblogLog has been sent to Yahoo. This is a fairy story, could you please tell us more on how this happened?
MBL was 2 years old when it was sold to Yahoo. The social features started testing 8 months before and were live 3 months before. As is usual with these things, I ran into someone I knew (Bradley Horowitz). Because of some VC activity on our side, he realized that he had very little time to act before we became expensive to acquire. He wanted us, and wanted us (relatively) cheap. It all came together.

Now how do you see the future for MyblogLog?
The team and the service are doing great, but I haven't been involved since April so I shouldn't comment on specifics.

What about you? What are you doing now? What are your plans?
I'm spending a couple weeks in Berlin right now. My official part-time roles are at Mashery and Winksite, which are both offering a ton of great, new services. I am also helping out a few other people like Involver, Dogster, Lending Club, and Polar Rose. I am looking to commit to a new full-time gig this fall and am testing the waters with something Dave Cancel and I are releasing shortly – Gigaom and Lookery.