It looks like the team at Google/Blogger have finally decided to update the ever popular but getting crusty Blogger.com blog platform. They announced a new Blogger Beta today which seems to go part way to answering some of the calls for updating that many Blogger bloggers have been calling for for years. New features include:
- Categorize your posts with ‘labels’
- Dynamic Serving (leading to faster publishing)
- Control who can read your blog (private blogs) update – seems there are some bugs with this – don’t go publishing anything too private yet.
- Change the appearance and content of your blog with your mouse instead of HTML (sort of like widgets)
- New Dashboard
- New Templates
- User accounts will now be Google accounts instead of Blogger accounts
- More Feed options (ie feeds for comments on your blog, feeds for comments on individual posts as well as RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0)
While I haven’t seen any of this (it looks like my old blogger account isn’t one of those that has been allowed to join the new beta yet) it seems like a ‘nice’ update that brings Blogger.com a little more up to date – however when you compare what they’re offering in comparison to other platforms you’d still have to say that it’s pretty light on in terms of features.
Still – I guess this is a step in the right direction – although I’ve always been a little confused by how a company who is as innovative and progressive as Google can have a tool that was so far behind it’s competitors in a 50 million+ user game like blogging. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come.
Is anyone in the beta program? Feel free to give us a mini first impression review in comments below or link to where you’ve posted your review on your own blog.
