Google introduced a newly designed Blogger which now offers its bloggers a clean, easy-to-use interface, shared comments, author profiles, and posting via email.
Owned by Google, Blogger is a free web-based service that helps consumers publish on the web instantly without writing code or installing software. First launched in 1999, Blogger’s powerful publishing tools enable users to create, collect, and share opinions and experiences with a web-wide audience whenever they’d like. “Blogger is committed to bringing more voices and points of view to the web,” said Evan Williams, Blogger program manager. “These enhancements make web publishing as easy as possible, delivering the power of blogging into the hands of more people worldwide.”
Previously, Blogger’s set up may have been seen by novices as difficult, with basic programing knowledge needed for template changes, publishing and customization. Creating a weblog, or a blog, using the new version of Blogger takes three simple steps and just a few minutes.
Google went out of office to outsource the redesign of Blogger. Adaptive Path was brought in to redesign key areas of the Blogger.com registration system and to assist Google in developing a deeper knowledge of the many ways people want to use their blogs. “Google clearly understands the value of a good user experience,” says Jeffery Veen, Adaptive Path partner and project lead. “They had very specific goals for this redesign, and our close collaboration made it possible to achieve them.”
“As a user-focused company, Adaptive Path realizes that lean, clean design is essential to the site’s usability,” says Jeffrey Zeldman, founder of The Web Standards Project. “This is a best practice of today’s Web design. I’d expect nothing less from this company.”
The new look was created by Douglas Bowman of Stopdesign, a San Francisco firm known for its elegant, standards-based design. “With this redesign, we focused on making Blogger.com much more friendly and approachable,” Bowman says. The design features rounded corners, large icons, direct concepts, and helpful directions.
Adaptive Path and Stopdesign worked with Google to pare down the sign-up process, making it short, intuitive, and effortless for first-time visitors. “Don’t know what a blog is? We define that right up front so that anyone visiting Blogger.com gets a quick understanding of what a blog can be from the minute they hit the homepage,” Bowman says. New tour pages walk through the concepts in more detail.
Blogger New features include:
* Profiles: Enables Blogger users to convey more information about themselves so readers can learn more about the people behind the blogs, and discover others who share similar interests. This adds a community feel to Blogger, perhaps taking a page from LiveJournal, an online blogging community.
* Posting via email: Users can now publish to their blogs instantly from any email-enabled device, including cellular phones and PDAs.
* Comments: Google has finally added the comment option to Blogger, which is usually a given function in any blogging program.
More information about other enhancements, including new template designs and dashboard, can be found at Blogger.
In addiiton to Google GMail, Blogger is another huge Google AdSense revenue source, serving Google AdWords/AdSense ads that are targeted towards a blog’s content. This, in turn, keep blogging on Blogger free for its users.
