It’s only been a day and already Blogger’s starting to grow on me. Although I find its interface too simplistic, I appreciate its clean lines and simple, easy to publish mentality. And although I’m not fond of the ad on top of the page, I appreciate the fact that if/when I want to, I can move my blog to a locally hosted page with no advertising. A project for the books when I get my laptop and upgrade my Debian installation to the latest version.
But what really attracts me to Blogger? Tools such as WordPress et. al give me the ability to create a blog, but they don’t instantly put me in touch with a large number of users who share my interests. I host my own MovableType blog here and although I love the flexibility and functionality I receive from it, it’s missing one crucial element.
The ability to put me in touch with other people around me.
Now that’s important. For example, being the curious sort I am, I viewed my profile and started clicking on the little descriptions I’d put in. I’ve got to say, I was extremely interested in what showed up. Here’s a little list of facts I found interesting:
- I found out that I’m one of three Canadians (four total people) who put down “Fifth Business” as one of their favorite books. The other two are Cindy and miss-decieving-appearance. All three of us live in the GTA.
- I haven’t found a female who’ll admit to liking Linux ;-)
- Katt has 3/5 of the same interests as me (Photography, Music, Blogging). _However_ one must also keep in mind that Kat’s list of interests is also at least 4 times the size of mine!
- Guys overwhelmingly like Jurassic Park, while Airframe has a more balanced mix
- J R seems to share quite a bit of my taste in movies. That picture he has up of himself is freaky however…
I’m sure there are lots of other interesting facts I can dig up and I’ve got to admit that I’m somewhat fascinated by the minutae of detail I can see about other people. It’s a little slice of someone else’s perspective and I’m captivated.
I think Blogger has the potential to be a lot more than what it is right now however and I hope the Blogger team’s working hard on that. Some items I would seriously consider are:
- Support for Trackbacks/Pingbacks
- Support for an integrated Photoblog
- Ability to ping external sites when you update your blog
- Increased community interaction/linking.
- The ability to easily add people’s weblogs to your blogroll simply by selecting their profile
- Update a list in real time of people who’ve viewed your profile and a link to their blog
And much, much more…