Ben Sullivan of TechBlog has
Ben Sullivan of TechBlog has proclaimed Blogger’s death: Blogger RIP [link snarked via Bloggertech (not to be confused with Techblog)]
Bloggertech points out some problems with Sullivan’s stance, but I’ve got one more: what Sullivan misunderstands is that many people who have blogs aren’t going to use tools that require installation either because they’re not capable of it or it’s not that important to them. E.g. I’m capable of installing an app that depends on PHP, MySQL, etc., but to do so I’d have to pay extra (my Earthlink ISP doesn’t support some of that stuff), and it’s really just not that important to me since Blogger does what I need.
Average consumers don’t want to deal with configuring MySQL. Blogger gets that. Userland gets that.
It’s not that Movable Type, Greymatter, Slash, Squishdot, etc. don’t get it — they’re just tools for a different market. They’re geek tools; they are not consumer tools. Blogger is. That’s why it has been so successful and why it will continue to be successful (at least until the cost gets so out of hand that Ev can’t afford to keep it going…which is the motivation behind whatever Blogger Premium he’s cooking up on a backburner).
Radio (which I’m still playing with) seems to be a nice mix of a consumer tool with enough complexity and openness that geeks can mess around under the hood.