Phone Blogging: Chosing a Blogging Platform (3 of 4)

So you decided to start a blog? Or have been blogging for years? Or don't even really know what a blog is, but think you might ant one? Whether you're a veteran in the blogging world or a neophyte just learning the vocabulary, you need to consider your options and decide on a platform to use going forward. Especially is you are going to blog on the go, as each platform option presents different mobile options for aspiring mobile blogger.

First, some background for new bloggers. The word "blog" came from the term "weblog", "web log", basically a log of articles published on the world wide web. The idea is that you write up an article and post it, and it is prepended (placed at the beginning of the page), so readers see the most recent first. Simple concept, it's the content of the articles, or posts, that takes skill and art.

While existing bloggers obviously already have a platform chosen, there are times the move in necessary when your needs change. And new bloggers don't have experience with any platform, making the decision difficult. Below, I will discuss several blogging platforms I have experience with and their strengths, weaknesses, and some reasons to choose one over the others for your needs.

When I first started blogging in November of 2004, I started on LiveJournal. It was a personal blog to just post my thoughts. I chose LiveJournal at the time because most of my friends across the country who blogged were using it, and it allowed me to read their posts easily. LiveJournal was one of the first blogging platforms, and is an open source platform, and also the name of the website that is the primary User of the software. There are a number of other popular sited that use the LiveJournal platform. LiveJournal is more feature rich than most other platforms, and is one of the few that has group or community blots built in for social interaction. LiveJournal also allows full customization of the look and feel of your blog. It has the best built in integration with Twitter and Facebook, allowing easy automatic sharing on each, and automatic sharing of Twitter on LiveJournal. The Twitter posts, however, give the blog a bit of a spam like feel, so I would only recommend utilizing it on a personal blog. On the actual LiveJournal website, statistics require a paid account as goes a custom URL not ending in .livejournal.com, and there are limits that are higher with a paid account. On the downside, LiveJournal has a less professional feel, and the social aspect is designed in a way that lends better to personal than professional applications. RSS functionality is very limited. I have mostly moved away from LiveJournal even for personal blogging, because of the lack of easy import ability and issues getting formatting to work pasting blog HTML code from other blogging software.

Blogger is a platform owned by Google. It is currently the primary platform I use. Blogger does not have the social elements LiveJournal has, but is more professional in feel and allows multi-author blogs. Blogger is completely closed source and doesn't have any option to run on a separate server. Blogger is fully functional with no cost, but requires a Google account. All customization is available in to all users. Blogger integrates with Google Plus, Google Analytics, Google Adsense, and FeedBurner.

WordPress and Blogger are two of the most popular blogging platforms, but WordPress is much more popular for business blogging than Blogger. Like LiveJournal, WordPress is open source, and, unlike Blogger, WordPress can be installed on other servers. WordPress is less integratable with other services than Blogger, but the ability to install it in another website is a big plus in its favour, especially for corporate blogs. WordPress is very well written and very feature rich. It has a very professional look and feel, and excellent import ability from all the major blogging platforms. The downside with using the actual www.wordpress.com is that, like LiveJournal, a custom URL requires a paid account. Unlike LiveJournal, customization requires a paid account as well. Currently, I import several Blogger blogs into WordPress blogs each time I post, and am still testing to decide if I want to fully move over or stick with Blogger as my primary platform. The import ability makes WordPress an easy platform to migrate to or use as a mirror as I do now.

I've discussed Twitter here before. While it is a blogging platform, it is what is referred to as micro-blogging. It is limited to 140 characters per post, so it works better for quick thoughts, announcements, and sharing links, pictures, and videos than for full blogging. It is useful, as I discussed before, in getting the word out about blog posts on other platforms.

Tumblr allows full blogging, but isn't well equipped for formatting. It is much better suited to sharing pictures, videos, quotes, and links. It is probably the best platform for a photo blog, but not as good for a traditional blog with articles.

MySpace has a descent full features blog. I used to cross-post my LiveJournal posts to it, as I had friends on MySpace that weren't on LiveJournal. I moved away from it because most of my friends moved to Facebook. It is not a good platform for most professional or corporate blogs because of the MySpace integration, but works well for personal blogs and musician and band blogs, as MySpace has excellent support for both the Indy and mainstream music industry.

Microsoft Live had a decent blogging platform in the past that I cross posted to for a while, and Xanga was a decent platform at that time, but I haven't used either for years, so am unsure what they are like now. With some investigation, it appears when Microsoft acquired WordPress, Microsoft Spaces, the earlier Microsoft blog, was migrated over to the main WordPress site.  Xanga appears to be alive and kicking.  Both were good for personal blogs, but didn't have a professional or corporate feel.

Some people blog directly in Facebook and/or Google Plus. While the reach can be very good because readers can stay on one website and read stories and articles directly there, and some readers will read something that way who won't if they need to leave the site, both platforms give little to no ability to format, and don't give the freedom other sites do with online images. So you get better reach with the cost of the ability to create eye pleasing and visually professional blogs.

Of all the choices outlined above and other options available, I'd say for most people looking to start a blog or migrate to something new, Blogger and Wordpress are the front runners. But before you decide. visit all the sites and any others you come across, look the site over, and find several blogs on the website or using the platform, and decide what you think of the look and feel. On the ones you like, go ahead and create an account, you're not obligated to use it. Look around, explorer, play, experiment. Decide what platform you like the best, based on look, interface, and features. And remember, you can change your mind later if you need to.

http://www.livejoural.com
http://www.blogger.com
http://www.wordpress.com
http://www.twitter.com
http://www.tumblr.com
http://www.myspace.com
http://www.xanga.com
http://www.facebook.com
http://plus.google.com


Bethany Kennedy
IT Professional


Next: Mobile blogging discussion of applications and strategies.

Google Plus Gets a Facelift

Okay, so Google released a new version of Google Plus this morning.  I was logged in with the old look, clicked on something, and everything changed.

First impressions?

I like it.  It's elegant and original.  It's still fairly simple in design, and I'm finding it easy to use so far.

I've been reading some complaints on Google+ today, and there seems to be three.  First, people with large hi-res monitors don't like all the white space and don't like how it looks.  Second, people think the adding of the cover photo makes the profiles look too much like Facebook's profiles.  And three, people don't like the chat panel at the right hand side.

Google Plus in Wide Screen View

On the first one, I run Windows 7 on a laptop, with a second monitor that's 21 inches, wide screen.  If I make it full screen on the big monitor, yes, there's too much white space, and it looks goofy.  But I normally run Chrome docked on the right hand side of the big monitor, so that it's only half a screen, and the new layout looks quite nice that way.

Google Plus in Narrow Screen View

On the second, though there are similarities, I really don't think they look that much alike.  The profile picture on Google+ is on the opposite side as the one on Facebook, and instead of being a small picture overlapping a fairly tall cover photo, n Google+, the profile picture is large, with the cover photo passing behind it in the centre and showing a small amount on the other side.  The Google+ cover photo is much narrower and longer than the Facebook one.  The name is at the top above the cover photo rather than below like Facebook.  In Google+, the friend related information is on the right of the stream instead of above it like Facebook.  Facebook's Timeline of course has a two column profile stream, whereas Google+ is a single column.  So basically, the types of content are very similar, but the layout and design are much different.

Facebook Profile

On the third, running the browser narrower like I described above completely hides the chat module.  Even scrolling over, it isn't visible.  So it's not really a problem if you run the browser narrower.

The other complaint I've heard is that it's not very intuitive.  I actually haven't had a problem with that.  It all comes naturally on the new interface for me.  Maybe it's just written for the way I think.

Google Plus Profile

Biggest strengths?

I think the profile looks classier than it did, and more business like.  While Facebook's Timeline does look nice, it feels like something that's good for personal things, not for a business.  The Google+ profiles feel very professional, and though not as "fun", seems like a much better design for business.

As expected, and this was already part of Google+, Google Plus has a much better search ability than Facebook.  That has always been my biggest complaint about Facebook.

The sidebar controls take up less vertical real estate, so I don't have to scroll as much as I did in the old interface and in the current Facebook.  And the fact that the bar stays static makes using it much easier.

Biggest weaknesses?

I haven't really found any that cause me a problem.  I think the biggest weakness is that while the new design is definitely an improvement in my opinion, it didn't really fix any existing issues Google+ already had.  It's just basically an interface face lift, not a bug fix or a solution to known issues.  And the added features like Explore and new ways to find people don't seem to be too useful, at least to me.

Bethany Kennedy
IT Professional

The Art of Socialization: Blogging to Twitter, Part 2

So you know the value of publishing your blog posts to Twitter.  Now how do you do it?  Some blog platforms have this ability built-in (LiveJournal, for instance), while others require a plug-in or a third-party product.  Whether you use a built-in feature, a plug-in, or third-party product, there are pluses and minuses for each solution.

My experience with blogging is with LiveJournal, Blogger, Tumblr, and Twitter.  One of the most popular blogging platforms is WordPress.  I haven't used it, so my knowledge of it is limited.  My mother in law uses WordPress and seems very happy with it.  Her blog is called Designin' with Judy and is hosted on her company web site, TechPalette Design.  The CleverWP blog has an article about using the plug-in WP to Twitter to publish your blog entries to Twitter.  I haven't tried the technique since I haven't used WordPress, but it seems to be a workable solution.

One third-party solution that will work for any blog (or website for that matter) that has an RSS or Atom feed is FeedBurner, which is currently owned by Google.  Blogger, also a Google product (though not originally as with FeedBurner), doesn't contain any built in ability to do this, so a third-party product is necessary.  If you have a Google account, you can use the same account to log into both.

The Art of Socialization: Blogging to Twitter, Part 1

Why do you write a blog?  Whether you write as a place to share your thoughts or activities, a place to share your art or the things you love, a place to promote your business, are a step in changing the world, chances are, you write to be read.  A blog with no readers is just a personal diary.

One of the big hot things on the web right now is social networking.  What used to be done in clubs and bars, conferences and conventions has moved to the web as social networks.  Everyone's heard of them, Facebook and MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter.  People build their social network by finding people they know in real life, finding people with shared interests, finding friends of their friends.  The more people you know, the faster your network grows.

People use social networks for many things.  Some just want to know people, read about other people's lives.  During the Great Depression, cinema took off.  People were looking to escape their daily lives and their own troubles.  In a movie, you could watch other people's lives and forget about your own.  Centuries before that, novels became popular for the same reason.  While people still go to watch movies and read books, TV has really filled this escapism void.  And know On-Demand and Netflix, TiVo and DVR, Youtube and IceFilms, have made it so we can watch what we want when we want.  We can escape from reality any time we want with whatever we want.

Social networks and blogs fill this same need for people.  They give people a window into other people's lives.  But with these things, it is real people, real stories, not the fiction of movies and television.  Well, presuming everyone is honest.

No matter what you blog about, there is an audience.  There is someone out there somewhere that is interested in what you want to talk about.  The Internet is world wide (hence the name World Wide Web).  There are 6.91 billion people in the world, and, though obviously not every one of them is connected to the web, there is bound to be someone out there that shares your interests.

So, you want to write to be read, and there's someone out there that wants to read what you have to write.  How do you find each other?  The reader of course could do a search in Google or Yahoo! or whatever search engine they like and hope they find you.  But how high in the search will your blog be?  While the terms your reader searches for be the ones that find you blog?  There's no guaranty.

The goal of the blogger is to connect with people who share her interests who want to read what she has to say.  Isn't this what social networks are designed for?  One good way to get readers is connect with people through your social network that share the interests you write about, then share your blog with your social network.  Posting links to your blog entry to a social network is called socialization.

I talked in my last entry about Twitter.  Twitter is one of the larger social network, and there are applications set up that make it easy to share your Twitter Tweets with most other social networks.  If you can get it to Twitter, you can spread it to the rest easily.

In the next series of posts, I'm going to talk about ways to get your blog seen on Twitter.  From there, you can share it with the world.

Bethany Kennedy
IT Professional