Google staff at SXSWi today have noted they cannot reveal all of the makeover details, but Blogger is undergoing a major revamp to its outdated, clunky blog offering.
Google is so far ahead of any other company in many aspects, but their blogging platform has appeared to be their ugly, forgotten stepchild. When Google launched the Google Web Toolkit, we were baffled that it wasn’t related to or integrated into Blogger in any way.
The makeover will include a face lift to the user interface to look and behave in a more modern way and the new “content discovery feature” will be unveiled in more detail at SXSWi but what we know is that it is kind of like the StumbleUpon of Blogger blogs, offering interest-related content to blog readers. It is still unclear as to whether that is an offering when signed in to Blogger or if any web visitor will be offered “related” content (not awesome for keeping eyeballs on your content, but good for keeping eyeballs within the Google network).
Google Product Manager, Chang Kim said, “We cemented ourselves as one of the largest blogging platforms and the sixth largest website in the world, according to Alexa. Blogger users published more than half a billion blog posts, which were read by more than 400 million active readers across the globe. We introduced template designer, real-time stats, comments spam filtering, mobile templates, web fonts, and more. And to top it all off, we were dubbed the most reliable blogging service around.”
Video: Have you looked at Blogger lately?
Screenshots of the makeover:
These screenshots are from Google, we did not shrink them to make them this distorted:
Above: old editor. Below: new editor.
Above: old dashboard. Below: new dashboard.
We’re not sure the updates to the interface are anywhere near game changing, but we’ll take Google’s word that more cool stuff is coming for Blogger. Perhaps we won’t have to compare Blogger to drawing with crayons anymore?
Nick
March 14, 2011 at 3:43 pm
I’m surprised they have sucked so hard for so long. I think the first blog post I ever wrote was on BlogSpot ( before Blogger bought them? )
It’s been a long time since I have even looked at their platform.
It will be interesting to see if the GOOG ever really gives em’ some serious love…
Marlow Harris
March 14, 2011 at 3:55 pm
Laugh all that you want at Blogger, but as an experiment, I launched half-a-dozen free Blogger sites, and optimized them for my key terms. Within weeks, all but one ranked on the first page of Google for my key terms, beating out many older and more established blogs and websites.
Julia
March 14, 2011 at 8:56 pm
Do they still rank highly? I’ve found that the sandbox effect will make new sites rank well for a few weeks and then they steadily start to sink.
Jonathan Benya
March 14, 2011 at 4:25 pm
Wow, this is about 2 years to late, methinks. I’m curious to see what they make of it, but in all honesty I think wordpress has already won the race.
Melissa Zavala
March 14, 2011 at 5:04 pm
It will be interesting to see how the new Blogger does (SEO-wise) in comparison with WordPress. At least, I’d like to hear more about that as people begin to use Blogger more.
Chris
March 14, 2011 at 5:28 pm
I used to use blogger then I found WordPress = end of story.