Mike Golby ended one of his exceptional weblog postings with a rant: seems as if Blogger is misbehaving. Again. And when I clicked the permalink to copy the URL, the page below showed up. As Mike might say (just might, you know), seren-fucking-dipity.
Blogspot is failing, and it seems as if Blogger isn’t much further behind. If these technical problems continue, we’re looking at the potential loss of weblogs, and webloggers. As it is, as Mike points out, we’re losing some lovely writing as post after post after post is lost.
I have my own server and use Movable Type, but I have several friends whose weblogging homes are in Blogspot, and whose blogging tool of choice is Blogger. I don’t want to lose them, or even a letter of their writing. Their problems are my problems, too.
The sad thing is, Blogger is still the easiest approach to bringing new webloggers into the community. It’s a no-cost, no-host solution that allows a person to try weblogging without any investment other than their time. For some people, low or no cost solutions are essential — even 20.00 US a month can mean the difference between paying electricity or not for some members in our community.
(And as for those webloggers who shelled out for Blogger Pro, as I did, the frustration must be doubly painful. These people trusted Pyra to deliver a professional product and, instead, received a lot of new toys built on the same old problems. Not Good Business.)
Regardless of whether the weblogger eventually moves to MT or Radio or some other weblogging tool, we need to have a no-cost, non-technical solution for the newbies, or we’re going to lose potential voices. Not to mention the voices of friends we’ve already made.
Bottom line: We — the global community of webloggers — can’t afford to lose Blogger. However, I’m not sure we can afford to continue with it, either.