Bloggeratto

This post series continues from this post

Now is time to the more focused points in this matter:

Part 2: The Internals

I.-Looking At Blogger From A Outsider View

Aditya posted a very on par post piece to what the comments from Sinpolyma stated already.

I am quite surprised they don´t get to see the bigger picture here beyond what it is there.

A quote from Aditya post worth to mark as the idea behind the post itself would be:

True, the update came in late, and following the posts on Bloggeratto, it seems like Blogger is planning another update (Avatar calls it Blogger v3.0). What more can we ask for? Updates upon updates, which seem to be going in the right direction. Why do we then call the update underwhelming?

To what i must respond:

Because IT IS, the funny thing with/in the Wordpress debacle with Blogger, even considering that the free wordpress version is a closed platform in the sense of the "Code-It-Yourself" like Blogger wich allows that complete freedom is that it revolves around the theory vs practice of it:

True, Blogger can be coded into a huge lot of things, i have tried that myself and it´s quite great, in Blogger v2.0 it got the Bleet almost 3 years to have something worthy of the potential Blogger always had, and by the announcemnt of Blogger v3.0, there were unfinished hacks by the bleet, that made v2.0 on par with 90% of what Blogger v3.0 has, making a landmark about how powerfull the Blogger Community can be when focused on something.

But even then, this does not reflect in practice at all, because even with all the stuff that got out to be in the open, the ease of use/ the installation of it/ manteinance in some cases stopped in their tracks most of the potential users that prefered not to make the integrations of such user powered features.

Blogger didn´t helped either, they never showed a continue interest to support what the Bleet was offering or showcase the best of it, also never provided with sufficient documentation to encourage Blogger Development.

And this is where practice vs theory enters and win.

All of this is a reality in wordpress, the platform encourges plugins since they can be used right away, and i think that is why they don´t bother with a open code option for the free version, they want people to produce plugins, and they of course want people to upgrade (hell i wish there was a Blogger pro version, i would gladly pay to have a better Blogger), they are now offering very easy domain synching, a lot of plugin documentation, they encourage plugins, and just to put things into perspective, most of the cool tech people in the web have wordpress blogs and not Blogger blogs and what makes it even more surprising is that Wordpress has a piss little userbase compared to Blogger.....

Yes, the new Blogger is in the right path, but it is becuase they started to copy what wordpress does, and not even in the full way, just in a still very cautious way.

Of course that the new one click widget creation is the response to wordpress plugins, but damn, give us more documentation to work from.

That is where i fail to understand too.

Right now, the money in web 2.0 is not only in advertising and traffic but mindshare, i mean, mindshare plus traffic is what is driving the prices of adquisition right now, if it were just cold hard profits potential youtube would have been snatched at a range of 300-500 millions wich was his true potential bold worth and not the completely blown out of proportion 1650 millions, that of course was not handed in direct money but in stock.

So, as Robert Scoble says, how on earth a company like Google that owns google video and now youtube has a extreme lack of video tutorials and video PR?, how on earth if they want to put adsense drive money from Blogger they really don´t even try to really push profits of it?..

If they did, there would be a Adsense for Blogger blog, with videos and pr blogging making the rounds, and i assure you that it would increase profits almost overnight.

This also is tru for every single other service that google offers.

So, if they are pointing out that Blogger don´t makes enough moneny, is THEIR OWN FAULT.

If they look at themselves and say "sheesh, Blogger don´t gets really valuable mindshare now", it is also Google own fault becuase they have done almost nothing to really exploit profits from Blogger besides some poor inertia implementations.

Blogger as i see it is a true untapped source of rolling cash and yet Google fails to see it and do something about it.

just as a note, if Blogger were put to move real money, it coud have a economy as big as Myspace has now in just a year.

I mean, as i started this point, if you look Blogger from a outsider view it just don´t adds up to what it could be. and that is where the problem starts.

I bet if you put Blogger to a internet newbie, they would never guess Blogger is owned by Google.

II.-Development Hell

Blogger v2.0 resides and even now is destined to die in development hell, it is really like a Platform that never got finished, it is a Fucking frankestein, it sure can do almost anything if you know how, but the inside knowledge of it you need to do so, is way beyond the bar the average used can tolerate, many would say even beyond what advanced users can tolerate some times.

Here are some of the things that Blogger v2.0 never finished during it´s time and that stopped in a eternal limbo, and that SHOULD be reactivated for development for Blogger v3.0 if they plan to truly change Blogger:

1.-AudioBlogger (AudioBlogging)

It now has been declared finally dead after being a zombie for over 3 years.. no, you didn´t read wrong. it´s development stopped moving 3 years ago.

When Evan Williams sold Blogger to Google for peanuts, he did it with what i am now very sure must have been some of the most intriguing undisclosed terms ever.

While he remained at Blogger he took Audioblogger from being provided by AudioPost to be provided as a licensed service by himself to google, almost in a semi-official at the side development, that later when Evan williams decided to left Google he turned it into a research pool to build Odeo from in terms of the idea.

Audioblogger service stood the same way since the day it was implemented without any change. now that we know it was managed by Evan williams under a lined out contract we can understand why it never got upgraded to something else.

But now what?

We are in the fall of 2006 and how can it be that Blogger don´t has a native Audioblogging feature or made a stretch in showcasing certain services for that reason you could use directly from blogger if they didn´t want to support it?

Blogger v3.0 is sill something that is full of questions as where the platform will go and do next, but that is why i don´t like announcement to be so specific as they did it with "Blogger v3.0 is complete", becuase it reminds me how Blogger after the Google buyout stood static for a year in that department.

2.-Profile System: pages, database and search engine

I have the serious belief that Blogger and Google dropped the ball there,big time.

In a time where a thing like MySpace can get to 120 million users and drive a economy of almost of over 500 million dollars based on one of the worst products in the entire web that got his start as customizable profile pages, one must wonder what would have happened if Blogger continued development for it back when they implemented the profile system.

Even with all the competition in the market Blogger could still make a dinch to it if they wanted.

Add module editing with the ability to add code,add friends networking, profile comments, and profile customization and the just like that:

BOOM you got a great Blogger social network to complement Blogger that would get millions and millions of users right away.

But so far the profile pages are really just a outdated ornament for Bloggers when they could be put to good use.

3.- Blogger Photos

Ok, it´s cool to have photo hosting direcly built in from the Blogger Editor, but why i can´t control the photos?

Zero controls for them, no way to know how much space your account has, no way to order the photos, to synch the photos, to edit them, no nothing...

Why?, why is that you cannot manage them?

4.-Blogger Editor

How can it be that some of the third party blog editors are way better in a lot of ways than the Blogger editor?.

Why we can´t have a Blog editor as cool as WriteToMyblog for Blogger?..

5.-Comments

This is one of the areas where a lot of features have been added to blogger blogs, but why oh why it lacks the most important feature of all?

Comment management from the dashboard

This way, the Bloggers that like to mantain their comments open to anyone could edit mistakes, delete spam in batch, and even move comments where they should be....

III.-Reactivated Development

So far the only thing that got rectivated from the internal services that complement Blogger was Blogsearch.

Blog search was one of the most flaky things that ever graced Blogger v2.0, and that is saying a lot i must tell you.

Right now it has been fixed and running so far really great.

IV.-The Brand

Until the arrival of the new Blogger, Blogger PR and support were HORRIBLE.

None would give you the time of the day. almost like if it were being run by a single person that cannot be bothered to show his face becuase he is just too busy.

Right now, this have changed a lot. for the first time ever the activity of the official Blogger blog has light up into regularity, reponses from Blogger support now sport a machine generated response (but a response no less!!), and Blogger employes make the rounds in others blogs and the forums, Blogger documentation is getting better and they have reinstated a need for feedback that shaped in the form a of a paid survey feedback study they will conduct for that effect.

The Google Brand is still not felt enough inside Blogger, and integrations with other Google services are not yet happening, just to mention the most noteworthy:

1.-Picasa

I don´t know why they bought picasa and then touted it with Blogger back in the day and never expanded into it.

How it is possible the official Blogger blog has to announce Photo Blogging support from a third party photo service owned by the competition because they can´t announce their own since it don´t works for Blogger v3.0

(up to this Moment the picasa integration with Blogger v3.0 is awful)

The rumored Picasa revamp still don´t finds it way to happen.

and any update in features and integration is followed by some chirping noises into the night

2.-Google Analytics

Talk about a unfocused company as even google accepted when the CEO asked the Google Labs to not churn so many crap developments and concentrate in impoving what there is already out and broken.

So, why proper metrics have not been offered by google and integrated into blogs in some form or fashion?

Only they know it

3.-Google Video

One of the reasons Google video never really took off is because it was used 90% as a repository of copyrighted content or as a second source of already uploaded YouTube videos.

The service ws a mess and one of the worst Google Products in terms of image the company has ever produced.

Things could have been turned different if a integration with Blogger had been made when it was announced, but Google were too slow, even adding direct search to the main page of google was added like two months before they decided they have failed and that they needed to buy Youtube So Myspace and Yahoo didn´t eated them alive.

If original content would have been sprouting of it from the beggining, another story would have been told right now.

But you already know what happened and how Google also failed to gain interest to their video store initiative, wich is the main reason why they are looking for a deal with apple.

So, that is the story of all the internals, so i will be seeing all of you in the final part of this post series that delivers my very detailed look into Blogger.

Oh and if you think i am the only one looking into why it is underwhelming,i can quote other 10 posts about it, but if you want a more mainstream source, here you go:

Let Blogger Free from Valleywag

Maybe i should try to join that blog.. :P

To be concluded