I was a latecomer to MyBlogLog. Not being a fan of lots of clutter in sidebars, when I began to see it, I thought maybe it was just a fad and I did not rush to join. I had no idea what a great tool it is. Two things that are great about it:
First, it’s just nice to put a face with an IP address. Looking at my Statcounter stats has always been mildly frustrating to me. Who is that person who has visited my blog twice this week? Now, if they’re part of MyBlogLog, I can find out, and return the visit if they have a blog or two, or five. Before MyBlogLog, the only way I could return the visit was if someone left a comment, which most people don’t do, unfortunately.
Secondly, it’s a good way to get a little extra traffic and make some new contacts and friends, that I never would have found otherwise. I suppose that is the purpose of the site after all, and it works.
By the way, I was going to work on making the mybloglog widget prettier – I think the basic one leaves a lot to be desired – and then I ran across this site that saved me all the work. I really appreciated it. It looks MUCH better in the sidebar than the original.