Blogger Starts Socializing

by jordan | August 29, 2008 at 06:18 am | 95 views | add comment | 0 recommendations

It was only a matter of time... Blogger is introducing social-network elements to its platform, hot on the heels of WordPress. Soon, Blogger bloggers (looks like a typo) will be able to display their followers (a la Twitter), but only those who follow via the same blogging platform. No word on whether Blogger will become searchable, which has always been a sticking point for me. That, and the sheer number of splogs that litter the Bloggerverse, though I'm not really sure how to combat that particular issue. (My own blog, which is the opposite of newsworthy and has maybe two readers counting myself, is on Blogger)

The optional feature, along with a notification on blog owners' "dashboards" of how many people have subscribed to their blogs through Blogger, will be rolling out in the next few weeks. A new tab on the dashboard, called "Blogs I'm Following," lets Blogger users keep track of updates to the blogs on their subscription list.

The problem with these sorts of features is that they're inherently limited to readers whose "following" is directly tied to the Blogger software and its members, so it will reflect only a slice of readers. A follower widget (or gadget, as Google calls them) claiming 21 followers only refers to Blogger members, not to the overall number of people reading the blog, which could make the owners of smaller blogs get a bit image-conscious.

Blogger memebers will see more details on the logged-in welcome screen.