Yahoo! makes a (small) move -- buys MyBlogLog

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) purchased Mybloglog.com for $10-$12 million according to different sources. Mybloglog.com of Orlando, Florida started out as a statistical data service for web page and blog owners -- which is when I first signed up -- but then launched its Communities service and evolved into a blog social network. Today, MyBlogLog enables readers and writers of web pages and blogs to communicate, building social networks and communities much like News Corp's (NYSE:NWS) MySpace.

MyBlogLog only started its Communities not too long ago, but it grew quite fast with the help of a few A-List bloggers such as TechCrunch and Lifehacker who signed up for the service. Currently, MyBlogLog is available on about 45,000 blogs and has about 33,000 registered readers. The service looks at about 1 million readers of blogs a day, with technology and real estate subjects among the most popular.

While the social network part is more valuable to future growth according to both Yahoo! and MyBlogLog, Scott Rafer, CEO of MyBlogLog, thinks that given his company's statistical monitoring service, it could also sell information to advertisers about where to advertise what. This can become more significant as the company grows.

My ongoing question is whether Yahoo!'s strategy of buying small businesses such as del.icio.us and MyBlogLog as opposed to buying large, established networks such as Facebook is working for the Internet media giant. It's a strategy that worked well with Flickr, but del.icio.us is still growing and I guess we'll have to wait and see MyBlogLog's eventual contribution.

[Here's the announcement in Yodel.]