28.4.08 | Posted by
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No, this is not a continuation of my own posts talking about this over a year ago. this time is coming from a member of the Digital Press at The Standard:
I've been using Blogger since 2004. As a
basic blogging platform, it works. But when I read yet another
account of spammers taking over the service, it made my blood boil. The
problem isn't just that Google has failed to put all of the security and
anti-spam pieces together. No, what really bothers me is Google has neglected
Blogger for years, while concentrating its efforts on newer acquisitions and
higher-profile services, such as Google Maps.
Ian is of course mildly wrong here, Google not only has neglected Blogger, it always has acted this way with acquisitions that were either not invented/developed at Google Labs or assimilated into the Google Brand. some notable mentions not including Blogger are Picasa, Dodgeball and Jaiku.
Flagrant examples of leaving properties to rot. in the case of Dodgeball the case is even more sad because one of the founders resigned angry at Google when 6 month (or so) passed without Google letting Dodgeball do anything to save themselves from irrelevancy against the monster that followed later (Twitter).
The acquisition of Jaiku is also a case of tech that has not moved anywhere. any smart web tech follower would see that in the scheme of things, Dodgeball and Jaiku could or should make a combination of some sort as a way to battle Twitter. the first option of Google when shopping around was not Jaiku but Twitter. it is said (rumors) that Evan Williams (Pyra,Blogger and Odeo) was the reason Twitter didn`t sold to Google. Evan knows pretty well how Google works better than no one and i can assure that if they had been acquired by Google, the Twitter Craze would have may never happened, it would have got called Jaiku Craze instead because of how Google Operates with Acquisitions.
The only exception being YouTube and that was because YouTube was already huge having the upper hand at the negotiation all the time.
Returning to Blogger, Ian commits another mistake in the way he points out:
Blogger is just now rolling out a feature that lets bloggers
publish in the future.
Err no, testing a feature for future roll out, is not rolling it out Ian. you may want to replace "rolling out" with "testing" because it gives the impression the feature is out for all even if you are linking to the Blogger in Draft blog.
I also don`t care about the Blogger Splog controversy. i have known for a long time that Google makes a decent amount of money of Spammers and that they also used to serve another purpose.
Right now boiling all down to wanting the most needed things. i think the most needed things at Blogger are a Revamped Comment System (the truly worst part of Blogger by far) and a update to the Dashboard, Post Editor, Template Editor and Profiles.
Just making them work better and giving them a decent update to 2008. i mean, even Orkut looks better than Blogger now...
The latter are usually always covered by me over there, but never in detail because i am there to report, not to tutorialize or go deep into the implementation of such Widgets.
I think i can bring those cases to Bloggeratto either Widget by Post or in Resume when viable.
Could be a good way to give a more Rounded coverage on certain widgets that deserve such treatment. i would then follow suite and post a list of those posts in Widgets Lab that lead here.
Convergence and Subject re-use FTW!.
I think it Makes sense and it lets me shamelessly promote myself. what is not to like?
I will not deny that it has been hard to maintain my track on this blog, not because i don`t want to post in it. but because how i used to post in it. i was used to do long posts in Bloggeratto. doing long posts is no longer that cool and everyone is on the train to Blogging Economization. The downsizing of writing whatever you had in your mind into a resume of what you have in mind.
I don`t get used to the idea of that. i am trying to separate my channels of attention and expression so they don`t overlap and then i can find different angles to cast into the world.
The New New
I finally found the right way of continuing Bloggeratto plus i always have done. the first thing was to identify from where the new Blogger based talent blogs that are improving Blogger and check if they were constant enough for me to bother taking them into account then it was about the rest of the content. i have nailed it. i have found enough Blogger based Bloggers worth of my time and yours.
Blogger Fashionetti and The Re-Use of Other People Clothes.
The most dramatic change i noted in Blogger is that you can now find any Wordpress based template in Blogger or that people can port pretty much any design from Wordpress, Tumblr and elsewhere into Blogger.
While my friend Aditya would argue this means nothing. i think it is a good deal. that proves the point that sometimes the template do make the blog or help it compensate. now no one can say that Blogger don`t has the cool themes Wordpress has because Blogger users have ported the best already.
there are also wonders of adaptation and modification, from what were wordpress or tumblr templates turned into something else entirely. something i did here in Bloggeratto with the help of aditya almost two years back.
Then you got the new designs executed in Blogger blogs. i am pleased to see that there are some quite creative people that managed to make their blogger blosgs very pretty.
Blogger Concept Bloggers.
A special trait to be found more in Blogger based blogs is ultra specific Blogging. it goes beyond niche blogging, i do that in Widgets Lab and it is harder than it looks if you don`t want things to turn into infologging.
I mean Blogs about very specific things just to give some offbeat examples, i have found hundreds of these blogs in Blogger and never anywhere else. blogs blogging about Sharks, Photoshop errors, prank calls, etc,etc,etc.
That is something i also want to cover, it is that unique.
There are also concept blogs like the now inescapable Post Secret that take things further on the notion of having "unique content".
Brand Blogging
Closing Up
Those are some of the points i want to take from. just figured that it would be nice to share what i was thinking lately and to confirm the blog is not dead or comatose again.
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