Bloggeratto

This post series continues from this post

Lets finish this post series with the other important but overlooked points in the matter.

Part 3: The Externals

I.-Looking At Blogger from a service point of view.

Before the craze that eat all of the Blogger public mindshare came (hublogs with their social networking) Blogger was THE place to pimp out services,and offer them to the users.

There was only one problem, after Google buyout of Blogger, they were not longer interested in offer deals with third party services, list them or even give them a pat in the back with some PR blogging.

That was the problem that left Blogger behind too, just look not only at the usal suspect(WP), but look at almost any of the other true Blogging platforms. all of them make out deals, promotion packages, list useful services, and give some PR love.

Not Blogger, why?, my guess is that Google command saw it as a sign of brand weakness so they really didn´t wanted to mess with it, something that was proved to be a web 1.0 way of thinking later on when the monster of Myspace took of developing a 500 million dlls economy for third party services, tht in reflection generated money to myspace, they noticed late, but they did, and they have to suck up to most of them making money out of they ecosystem.

In the case of Myspace, you could say they can give themselves the luxury of it becuse they are te media darling, they can´t, but they realized it unlike Blogger, so what Myspace did?, churned out their OWN internal services to answer the external ones, and that for the most part is resulting very well with a porjection of expectec revenue for 2007 in all cleared money of over 300 million dollars minimum, 300 millions of pure profit. is not that insane???

but even then, the third pary services economy will mantain itself at 500 million for the next year... even with Myspace auto-conservationist practices..

And then we got Blogger with a registered(made,not used or active) userbase of over 90 million blogs.


If you are wondering, what have those Blogger unrelated numbers to do with Blogger external services management.

They are a point of reference, lets remember how many years has blogger around, let´s remember what i said in the last part abou Blogger being a unexploted Gold mine.

That is what i am talking about, why Google don´t want to make serious money from Blogger?,. why it don´t stand to their so pushed angle of being a reference of what is the now and the future?.

Why their PR Sucks?,Why their other serices dealings sucks??

and no, this was not said by me it was also said by others, even Robert Scoble, when he talked about how scarce it was for such a wonderful company...

II.-What about the service side?:

There is not much that a service can do, but play nice, support Blogger, something that most do, but services gotta have o find their biz model, they gotta find their way of having fluidity of money for development.

So, it is not surprise that they follow where the money is, and this case it is in social networking and hublogs first, the other True Blogging platforms becuase they provide good publicity and recognition, and after all that, they think on Blogger..

it is not that patethic??

but who can blame them, if i were a service,and i see that blogger is a lived up by my service as dead man, i have no choice but to put the other platforms and format first.

III.-The New Blogger

Now, Blogger is changing faster now, and has tried to recopu even if slowly from their old vices, they opted for the gdata API because of the level of integration it could provide to other services, and becuase it allowed to create other developments like what we have seen in the for of the one click widgets, and what i expect will be more advanced widget creators.

However funnily enough, it has been pushed more in a user powered angle thant for a third party services use, nothing has been mentioned on that matter in a solid way, so that is where one has to woder how it will be this time, we need that google remember that they cannot treat Blogger as a Google labs app, because it is not only a service, but their most independent platform.

And if they don´t want third party services support, how about providing them direclty, after all, they are "the Google" right?.

If it is money what they re worry about, they just need to rethink Blogger profitning, and i assure you that the money would start flowing..

IV.- The Right Path

Blogger suddenly realized how wrong they have been and rushes to be more accomodating to third party service, they rush to make deals and they care for the externals, wht they would need to do:

1.-Blogger Service Integration Support Center

A site powered and supervised by Blogger/google where brand can pitch themselves to google, and request for integration help, Blogger provides of what they need to do it so, and mantains a third party services directory.

2.-Blogger Third Party PR Blog

Unless Blogger buzz would suddenly turned into 100% PR talking, it is needed a blog to promote, list and pimp the recent deals, promotion and services now supporting Blogger. it is just needed.

3.-Blogger Services Help

A documentation repository for services where all tutorials and needed knowledege about Services supporting Blogger must be for later reference.

I think those 3 things, welll focused and mantained would do a great turnaround to Blogger damaged reputation into the right direction.

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And that is who this long post series ends, no matter if you liked or hated what i tlked here, the importat part is that you can have a personal opinion beyond if you are a fan oof Google or not.