Yahoo to rebrand MyBlogLog, and then what?

Yahoo is to make a number of changes to MyBlogLog, the stats service and distributed social network for blogs that it acquired at the beginning of the year. Speaking at Chicago's SOBcon at the weekend, recently appointed MyBlogLog community manager, Robyn Tippins, talked about Yahoo's forthcoming plans for the service, including:

• A re-branding of the service, presumably to give it the Yahoo treatment.
• A complete site re-design.
• An updated widget with more interactivity.
• Removing offensive avatar pictures which can show up on anybody's blog that uses the MyBlogLog widget!
• A way to turn off your presence for certain sites you visit.

However, as a number of bloggers have pointed out, the plans don't appear to address the two most prominent problems with the service: spam, and uptime/performance. At one point late last year, the MyBlogLog widget could be found employed on almost any tech-blog and many non-tech blogs you visited. As I noted when I interviewed MyBlogLog founder, Eric Marcoullier:

Fred Wilson is an admirer... Other high profile users include Mike Arrington, and Richard MacManus - helping to generate plenty of buzz for MyBlogLog. And even if you haven't already heard of the service, chances are you've seen the site's 'Recent Visitors' widget displayed on any number of blogs you frequent. 

And being a service popular with a-list bloggers paid off, as MyBlogLog experienced rapid growth, leading to the Yahoo buyout. But the widget isn't nearly as visible today as it used to be. First, TechCrunch removed the MyBlogLog widget from its site due to performance issues affecting load time. Then one user published a security exploit and was subsequently banned (and then following a wave of bad blog publicity, re-instated). Spam also started to become an issue, with users using their avatars as a back door way of publishing a free ad on the blogs they visited. People also started to receive spammy friend-requests.

So will a rebranding exercise be a enough to reinvigorate the service? I'm not sure it will be. First they need to fix performance issues, and keep out spam. I also think there is a broader lesson in all of this. A service that targets bloggers and builds its success on being adopted and promoted by the tech blogging echo-chamber has a certain vulnerability. Aggravate any of those key influencers and word can spread just as fast as it did on your way up, as on your way down. The barriers to embedding a new widget are pretty low -- sign-up and paste the needed code. Removing a widget is even easier.

For MyBlogLog -- or whatever it ends up being called -- to really succeed, it needs to not only win back those early adopters who've abandoned the service, but also to reach a much broader user base, way beyond the tech blogging echo chamber.