The Last Word: The big fuss!

Please note that my blog has changed addresses! It's all new and improved. Hence this old friend of mine had to be left alone. You can visit me at The Last Word (beta). It's all warmed up for you! :)

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It seems the human nature to cringe and not accept anything in its entirety takes many different forms and in different facets! I have not been following the Blogger Beta developments that closely, and my attempts to do the same have been met with a lethargic failure. Just too much has happened in too short a period of time for me to keep tab. So I have left that part go, and just following whatever happens in the present! Hence, if I say something here which seems to clash with some estabilished fact, please forgive my ignorance and do not start a flame war in the comments! And do point me in the right direction! :)

The word on the street

Now, coming to the point at hand. Before Blogger Beta, there was seldom a day we would not hear someone say 'I wish Blogger could ...' or 'Why can't Blogger have ...'. Now, Blogger answered our queries with a solid comeback and threw so many features at us that we didn't know where to start working and fixing up our blogs to incorporate those said new features. Not to mention Blogger made it easy on themselves by handing out transitions only in sets. So my question now is that why are people cringing that Blogger Beta isn't good enough? Where is it that Blogger has missed out?

Categories, next generation blogging feeds, better bridging of the gap between code and non-coders, and what not. Blogger definitely made it easier for everyone to blog! And eventually, they released the new HTML editor which helped coders also join the fray in their own way. Why then do we say that Blogger's set of features are industry standard and they could have done better than what they currently have?

The reality

True, the update came in late, and following the posts on Bloggeratto, it seems like Blogger is planning another update (Avatar calls in Blogger 3.0). 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?

We shouldn't be greedy now, and take the updates as they come, and trust Blogger to keep the good times rolling. Blogger is, as singpolyma has stated, way ahead of any other blogging platform out there, even if the features are at par (and not ahead) with them.

But at the moment, we need a reality check ... Does Blogger need any immediate updates that some of us asking for? Or can we do something to bridge the gap ourselves, and not be lazy? :P

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12 Comments

Wordpress Vs Blogger . If google really wanted to do something right they should have first compared it to the best blogging platform. The number complain about blogger is that it not been well seo'ed. Try posting on a wordpress.com blog and blogspot blog. the wordpress.com blog has more chances of coming in the Search engines than blogspot.
Why because

1. Well developed Seo'ed Themes.
2. Pings Various services automatically.
3. It is made by bloggers.

Overall Google did a really shoddy job. They should fire the developers. For so long it was underdeveloped. They could have done a much better job. Half the features are half baked.

Anonymous, on Fri Nov 17, 06:51:00 AM

also you might want to read http://www.valleywag.com/tech/google/let-blogger-free-215010.php

Anonymous, on Fri Nov 17, 07:06:00 AM

Blogger vs, true WordPress - duh WP wins, it's a all-control-is-belong-to-me hosted-by-me platform!

Blogger vs WordPress.com ... last I checked you couldn't get into all the nitty-gritty code on wp.com, or even install just any old plugin you want. Somehow... Blogger wins, even pre-beta ;)

I should stich all my comments like this together in a post sometime... hah.

Singpolyma, on Sat Nov 18, 06:14:00 AM

Hmm... I just got one mail alert instead of three... weird! :|

Made by bloggers or not, I used to like Wordpress only because of the features. However, Blogger has now matched WP on almost all of them. Plus, as Stephen points out, Blogger has the code of your blog open to you for anything you might wanna do with it! WP doesn't do this natively, and wants you to get your own hosting before letting you even look at your code! Thats a major restriction, since you can't customize your own blog. Blogger definitely scores here.

I don't know about the SEO problems. My blog shows up on Google searches as well as blog searches, with the pages showing up being the most popular ones (my hacks usually), so I really can't say much. But you'd think that a search company would take care of the basic search necessity in their own product, won't you? How can this be a problem?

Aditya, on Sat Nov 18, 07:51:00 AM

i of course have answered back.

Avatar X, on Sat Nov 18, 11:57:00 AM

You and Singpolyma are correct Aditya. That's why I agree with you! :-)

The features of the new beta are great and more than enough for now (considering they still have to migrate everyone over to a completely new system). Adding in even more at this point would be unwise.

Now that doesn't mean there still aren't additions that could make Blogger even better, but them not being included in this initial beta/migration to the new platform isn't an issue to me.

Blogger has been improved tremendously, and the beta shows that Blogger isn't being ignored like we had thought for some time. There are more things to come I suspect, and even at this point Blogger has been improven by a huge factor.

I'm gonna ignore the wordpress seo comments because I'm laughing too hard. :-)

Avatar is just getting old and cranky.

Anonymous, on Tue Nov 21, 09:32:00 PM

k

"Avatar is just getting old and cranky."

Ho-ho-ho

---because not being a issue to you....

add that you being synonym of cranky, and you will find i am quite amused by you response.

Anonymous, on Tue Nov 21, 11:17:00 PM

I thought you would enjoy that. :-)

Oh, forgot to add, it's great to see some new posts from you Aditya.

Anonymous, on Wed Nov 22, 01:34:00 AM

Thanks Kirk! As you can see, to some level, I am positively back! :) And also, thanks for agreeing with me ... Avatar is a bit too much to handle sometimes! I don't like to argue with cranky old men! :)

But yes, the features and good and plenty. What's the point in revealing a hundred new features, and then expect the people to understand them all in quick time to use them all. Better than that is this, to put them in phases, so that people get used to them, get creative and use them, and understand all the little nitty grittys to them!

Aditya, on Sun Nov 26, 09:17:00 AM

"Adding in even more at this point would be unwise." -phy3

I agree. They need to iron-out all the errors from the existing beta and then get every one to migrate smoothly. May be they can make the whole blogger code open like wordpress so that the developer community gets to play around with it while they are busy with this work. First in line I would love to see will be Singpolyma's inline comments with cocoment tracking :)

I do not think that wordpress gives any better visibility in search engines but the possibilities with a self hosted wordpress are unlimited. And one can always use feedburner's pingshot and ping goat.

Anonymous, on Thu Nov 30, 05:20:00 AM

Even with the existing new system of coding the template and creating hacks for Beta Blogger, it's getting a little hard for me to understand and get used to the changes. And I know code when I see them. I don't know how people not used to code would handle getting into raw HTML editing of their templates.

So, it's actually a good thing that Blogger is slowly revealing things instead of making a thousand changes. I also don't think Blogger will incorporate hacks as being native to Blogger. Labels can be considered an exception since it's something that every respectable blogging platform needs, and we were just improvising by hacking our way around. Blogger wants us to hack, and hack away to pieces. They will be doing some creative thinking of their own to come up with something we never thought of! :)

And finally, yes, I'd prefer Blogger over anything else really. Wordpress might use PHP to make it a little more powerful, and yes, a self hosted Wordpress blog might be the most powerful thing on earth. But at the end of the day, nothing beats power with the word free attached next to it! :)

Aditya, on Thu Nov 30, 11:37:00 AM

I do agree with the comment on being to much to handle....i am just that good.

;D

Avatar X, on Sun Dec 03, 12:21:00 AM