…and the adventures in trying out new music social networking sites continues:

When last we saw me and MOG, I was expressing tremendous frustration that their software was taking all day to learn what I had in my collection and slowing my machine down terribly while it did it. Well, it did eventually do an amazing job of capturing my collection — too amazing in some ways, I’m not sure I want every single bootleg I’ve got up there for all to explore, even though I think they’re all from bands who don’t mind. However, I did ultimately uninstall the “Mog-o-meter” plug in because it continued to slow down my machine tremendously. I have a Mac G4 that is not even 2 years old. If it can’t run on that without making Firefox take forever to open a new window from scratch or switch between Firefox and Word, that’s not good. So another way of tracking listens down :(

[in fairness, as a last.fm fan I'll say that I've heard their MacOSX client is a memory hog too, but since they have an open-source API that allows others to develop plug ins, I've been able to keep using the all but invisible iScrobbler plugin that has no impact on computer performance]

So MOG’s big thing is blogging (I assume “MOG” is meant to conjure “music blog” with potatoes in the mouth). They have some nice features in this regard:

– Upload an mp3 built into every blog entry window. Great idea but aren’t they BEGGING for lawsuits?!?!?!?!

– “Explore the MOG-o-sphere” which compiles everyone’s blog entries into a single stream, and has columns on the side for the ones that are the day’s and all-time top entries (based on user votes).

– A single button “like it” feature that enables people to easily mark a blog as one they like.

I figured the best way for me to test out this would be to repost some of the blog entries I’d posted over at last.fm and compare the responses. At first I was flattered that everything I posted was instantly liked by one person, until I realized that ALL blog entries were instantly liked by one person, and that the one person was the system itself. All in all, the comments I’ve gotten on the posts on MOG are so inferior to the quality of comments I got on last.fm for the same entries that I’m not sure I’m going to continue the experiment. For instance, in response to the post about bands I saw in 1982, on last.fm I heard from other old folks who’d seen some of those bands too and had reminiscences to share and from teenagers who were listening to them now and thought it was cool that I’d seen them then. On MOG I got “I was born in 1982.” Wow.

The blog entry that had the most likes on the MOG-o-sphere last time I checked was a profanity laced trashing of other users.

I’m sure there is good music blogging on there, but you wouldn’t know it without searching.

There are several problems with the design of the blogging system – if you’re going to make blogging the centerpiece of your system, you need to give people ways to treat it like a blog. The blog needs a page of its own rather than an eternal column on your profile. You need to be able to have archives with links. You need to be able to highlight what you think are your own best or most liked posts in sidebars. None of that is there.

Now it’s not the fault of the system if it’s attracting people with little to say, but it doesn’t make me want to stick around or contribute.

End analysis thus far: not impressed. The enhanced blogging has great potential for people who mostly want to write about music, but I don’t think they’ve done a good enough job setting it up to really make it superior to any other way of blogging about music that’s out there.