AP on Microsoft’s and Yahoo!’s Blogging Endeavors
Anick Jesdanun of the Associated Press examines Microsoft’s MSN Spaces and Yahoo!’s 360, which is an invitation-only service. (Where’s all the hype for invites like for Gmail?)
I’m not sure that Jesdanun has a good understanding of weblogs and the technology behind them. I feel like I need to clarify some fuzzy statements in the article. The way the article is written, I’m not completely sure if the author is making broad statements about blogging in general or if the statements relate only to the software mentioned in the article.
- “Blogs are Web sites where individuals can muse about politics, hobbies or everyday life.” Web sites allow this kind of musing, too. What makes blogs special is the technology behind them that usually allows very easy posting and updating. People use blogs for much more than just personal stuff. Many people use blogs professionally.
- “Of the remaining services, only one is truly free: Blogger.” Blogger is not the only free blogging service. I can verify that Frassle is free. Many lists of blogging software include other free services.
- “And to limit access to your blog, you need to find your own Web servers to host it; with others, you can make blogs public, private or in between through the regular service.” Some other hosted services have varying degrees of privacy options.
More in picking blog software, including links to lists of platforms
April 17th, 2005 at 6:27 pm
I think there’s at least two reasons behind the lack of buzz about Yahoo 360 (which I really rate) and Gmail. First and foremost it highlights the relative importance of e-mail and blogging – the number of people who are interested in blogging is tiny compared to those who e-mail (although there’s a lot more to 360 than just blogging). Second, Yahoo still isn’t _quite_ as cool as Google, although it’s getting there. Anyway, if anyone wants a 360 invite, leave your Yahoo ID in a comment here and I’ll invite you.
April 18th, 2005 at 11:19 am
Thanks for the invite, Dan100! I now have about 15 weblogs. I have to say, my experience with Yahoo! 360 has been far from satisfactory so far. Just setting up the weblog was horrible; I encountered a number of technical problems (their service only likes one of the Mac browsers I use); their error messages are meaningless; and their requirements and restrictions make no sense. I consider myself to be a somewhat experienced blogger and Web user and I became frustrated and confused. I can’t imagine what a novice user new to blogging will think after jumping through their hoops.
April 18th, 2005 at 1:30 pm
Maybe the system was having a bad day; it is a beta and has hiccupped in the past! In fairness to Yahoo when I was invited I only had to click on ‘Compose new blog entry’ to get blogging. However, using Firefox, I STILL can’t put links into my posts, which is very fustrating