23rd World

My first blog post back in 2000 was powered by Blogger, though my site runs on WordPress now. A few of my client’s blogs are still powered by Blogger and everything still works great, helped in part by the fact that Blogger has changed very little. When Google bought Blogger in the summer of 2003 many people were left wondering why. Their questions remain unanswered, and then people wondered why Google has let Blogger stagnate the past few years as both blogging and blog software options exploded on the web. And now Google junkies and tech gossips will doubtless mull endlessly over the sudden beta release of the new, improved, Google-integrated Blogger.

Reminiscent of Flickr’s move to YahooID’s after their buyout, my Google Account was already detected and a link encourageming me to switch my Blogger user account was presented. Already, I like this. I use several Google services including Gmail, Calendar and Sitemaps and like most people, I’d like everything to be simpler and easier. Integration all communication tools holds great efficiency potential.

I doubt the redesign will have much impact on self-hosting bloggers…that is, people who run blog software on their webservers as opposed to a hosted version. WordPress and similar full blown open source software applications boast incredible flexibility, customization capabilities and user-based support. Where blogger could pull ahead is in your hobbyist and non-tech blogger realm. They must realize that as the three features the beta highlights are:

New ways to customize your template - Drag and drop page elements and easily change your template’s font and color scheme.

Private blogs -Create a blog visible to just your friends and family, not the whole world.

Labels -Give your posts a category label so that you and your readers can easily sort by topic.

All of these things essentially make it easier for regular (non web-coder folk) to customize their blogs.
The new template customization seems to use the concept of web parts - movable configurable zones, similar to your customized Google, MSN or Yahoo homepage. This will allow people a more organic way of customizing thier site and allow them to feel in control without knowing any code.

Giving users push-button ability to make thier blog private is truly brilliant. All the loud mouths (like me) that want to shout their business to the world are already blogging - those left that don’t have blogs are either uninterested, intimidated by the technology or are concerned about privacy. Way to read your target audience Google!

The label feature is really just Blogger catching up to everyone else. Labels are more commonly referred to as categories or tags. Google’s chronic use of the word ‘labels’ instead of the popularly accepted ‘tags’ is perplexing and possibly confusing for some folks (IMO - it really just irritates me).

Beta blogs are invite-only (no one invited me *schniff*) so for now head over to Google Operating System and TechCrunch for an inside look at the new blogging features.