Blogspot or WordPress or maybe livejournal ? For most of my friends, this question seems to elicit a blank stare followed by an uneven response resembling “fuck off!”. Any attempt to explain the differences between blog providers is met with indifference, they have already started a precious blog and they simply don’t want to change. This is quite understandable of course but on a lazy Sunday afternoon I wonder if it couldn’t have been avoided.. why doesn’t humanity have a simple 123 process?
1. When i need to do something new, like start a blog, the first step is information garnered from some reliable sources (this does not include your friendly neighborhood milkman) .
2. Differentiate the options and their pros and cons
3. Make the choice depending on what has the most merit
Having a 123 response hardwired into our genetic code would save humanity from situations like world war 3, nuclear disasters, terrorism or getting a new nose job…again. Sadly the growing up stage weens us of curiosity and forever impairs the learning processes. So we stop asking questions like – what are the different blog providers? Which of these blog providers enable you to creatively express yourself? Which are better at ease of use and which provide the largest number of features?
Surprisingly though it turns out the world works fine even with people like us roaming around, a quick try at the 123 process got me no further than 1.. The basic differences between the providers were simply not provided! Hell the different providers were not provided! After much contemplation and reflection, I finally came upon the conclusion that something was wrong, really wrong! We cant all be bound by ignorance, whatever happened to the savior? Someone had stolen 123’s mojo!
Determined to bring back the mojo i embarked upon a mission to find the truth. Step two seemed awfully hard for a popular concept such as a blog.. A little search about search revealed that google was not feeling very good about the comparisons between itself and other blog providers. (Most reviewers gave WordPress an edge over Blogger) Turning to Msn or an independent search engine, I found a huge list of comparisons, reviews, and ultimately knockout rants about Blogger.
A quick search on Google for the word “blog” gives me 2,550,000,00 results out of which i hit blogger at result no.2, little known blog.com is next at no.9, however for a genuinely popular blog provider like twitter i have to way back to no.41. WordPress comes in at a sad 58, does anybody even go back that far?
Yahoo search results shows the striking differences-
Blogger – 02
Typepad – 06
WordPress – 07
Moveabletype – 10
(30th march 08)
Alexa gives a good idea of what is a poular blog through their traffic rankings.
#1 Blogger – rank 11
#2 WordPress – rank 49
#3 Livejournal – rank 68
#4 Typepad – rank 333
#5 Twitter.com – rank 591
#6 Blog.com – rank 4530
(30th march 08, ranking amongst all sites on the web)
If you already know WordPress is the best choice for you then step 3 becomes simpler, a search on google for “Blogger vs WordPress” gives 449,000 results. Out of first 10 results 4 favour WordPress, 3 favour Blogger while 1 neutral opinion gives an accurate assessment that blogger is great for newbies but pros need wordpress. A Yahoo search with the same phrase returns 4 neutral opinions, 4 favouring WordPress and 1 for Blogger. Thus the day is saved and the 123’s mojo is found ..with Yahoo.
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Nonsense Verse
For all those unaware – Blogger is owned by google
There are some nasty reports of manipulation of results by google – [article]
WordPress rocks
An excellent Review of Blog providers written by NAyK is found here
Alexa has a toolbar which tells you if the site you are on is worth your time
I still love Google, their PR is excellent – [Article]
I dont drink and I cant whistle.
