MyBlogLog is a service that dates back quite some time. I’m sure you’re all aware of the “Recent visitors” widget displaying the latest MyBlogLog members to have visited your site.

It’s a great concept, but there are a few things I don’t like about it:

- You only see the last X people.
- There’s not a lot of profile information disclosed.

To remedy this, I have created a new Wordpress plugin: Track MyBlogLog.

It does two things:

Track users

Similar to the widget, it will track all MyBlogLog members that visit your site. However, it will save the results in the database so you can see more results and can go back in time. You’ll also be able to see just how many times these MyBlogLog readers come to your site.

Additionally, the plugin will try and find more information about the user, such as their website URL, twitter URL, location, etc..

mybloglog-visitor-log

Identify users

The second part of the plugin simply makes available the information found before (website, name, etc..) and allows you to create a personalized message for the user.

You can see an example in the screenshot below:

mybloglog-personalized-message

Privacy Issues

I would never release this plugin if I thought there were privacy issues. I don’t believe there are. MyBlogLog users are very clear on the fact that they are being tracked and shown in the “Recent visitors” widget. This is just an extension of that so there shouldn’t be a problem there. MyBlogLog also provides controls to opt out of the tracking service.

Furthermore, most MyBlogLog users are also webmasters, and to me this seems like a win-win situation for both parties. The visitor will get more traffic back to his site, and the site administrator will learn more about his readers.

TwitterRemote

Yesterday a new widget was released allowing you to see which twitter users are visiting your site. Very similar to MyBlogLog in that regard. The only downside is that this is a third party service and you need to log into it, which means this widget can’t ever track the whole twitterverse.

Still, I’m thinking about making a similar plugin for this widget, if there is demand for it.

Download

For download instructions, go to the dedicated plugin page.

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