ON THE NEED FOR AN "OUTLOOK FOR BLOGS"

HERE WE GO AGAIN...

I remember in the early days of the commercial web (circa 1994, aka Web 1.0), one of my first frustrations was having too many email addresses.  I had one at CompuServe, one at the fledgling AOL, one at pipeline.com (one of the first ISPs) to start. 

That just exploded over the next few years, with Hotmail, Yahoo!, Netscape et al starting to offer their own email services.  And that's not to mention my company then starting to offer professional emails to all the employees.

I also remember the frustration of having to log into multiple places for all these accounts.  It would be a while before POP, SMTP, Exchange Servers etc., would make all these emails seamlessly accessible via Microsoft Outlook or the uber-email client of your choice.

This trip down memory lane is induced by my current frustration at the state of the blogging world and blogging platforms, which I've posted on before. 

Blogs, which need a different name, are yet another useful, and increasingly essential communication tool.  Over time, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to one say it will be potentially as life-changing as email to date.

However, in its early days, I'm already confronted with the frustrations and inefficiencies of having multiple blogs.  Let me count the ways:

1. My primary one here on Typepad, mp.blogs.com.  (Note how clean and simple it is, AND accessible from anywhere on the web, without any login speed-bumps...good job, SixApart/Typepad!)
2. My Yahoo! 360 (UNRELATED SUB-GRIPE:  how do I get the dang "degree" symbol next to the zero on 360 on this keyboard anyway?) one.  You have to go through the Checkpoint Charlie procedures to log into the service to get at my blog there.   It should be easily accessible by external parties using an address like 360.yahoo.com/mparekh.  Right now you have to:
   • get invited into Yahoo! 360* (until I find the *#@%! degree symbol) by somebody already there, because it's in "beta" dontcha know...AND it's also so chic in an Orkut sort of way.
   • then search for "mparekh"...
   • then find my blog there.
   • the Yahoo! blogging experience is also so chic in "AOL walled east berlin (sorry, walled garden) approach from a bygone era."  Since Yahoo! is blending social networking with blogging functionality, they've put the blogs behind a walled garden!  Come on guys...you're Yahoo!...remember where you came from!  Open the gates already...
3. My MSN Spaces blog at http://spaces.msn.com/members/mparekh/.  This one works with an easy, external URL.  At least Gates kept the gates open.
4. My "Blogger" one at Google here at mparekh.blogspot.com.  Again, this one is a friendly, external address...but Google got lucky here...they just bought blog pioneer Pyra Labs, and left things mostly unchanged...kinda like what Microsoft did with Hotmail in Web 1.0 days.  They also kept their blogging service open, but they're social networking thingie orkut, is still closed...and in beta-infinitum.
5. My AOL one, which is here somewhere, I know it...dang, I can't find the URL...no matter...it's likely behind a walled garden with weeds anyway...
6. And soon to come, a corporate and/or multiple corporate blog addresses.  The walls on those are ok...they're CORPORATIONS.
7. Not to mention other blogs that I might choose to start at any of these fine blogging software and services providers.

If you've bothered to click on any of the blogs above other than my primary one, you'll notice that they all request you go to my primary one.

Which may lead you to ask,

"Dude...why do you need so many blogs?  Just get one and stick with it". 

Good thought, but increasingly not realistic. 

Just as many users today have both a personal and professional email, and increasingly multiple emails for various aspects of their lives, there is an increasing need for multiple blogs for multiple purposes and parts of users' lives. 

Many blog services are less general blogging services than specific communities of users, much like the user groups around forums in the pre-web 1.0 days...remember the Well?

You may be getting the gist of this post...we need an "Outlook" type uber-blog service that allows users to not just READ blogs (a la blog readers like Bloglines, Newsgator, etc.), but to POST and MAINTAIN blogs.

Imagine if Outlook for email allowed you to just read people's emails, but to actually send emails and/or reply to emails, you had to scurry off to any number of places to log in and then do your email sending and responding. 

That's where we are with the world of blogs, circa 2005, with millions of newbie bloggers and blogees (my term for blog readers) entering this brave, new world.

For the rest of this post, I'll refer to this wished for service as "Outlook for Blogs", not for any Microsoftian reasons, but just to convey the gist of what I'm trying to get at.

There are seven key features that this "Outlook for Blogs" should have:

1. It should be web based, not client software based.  This way it's accessible via any PC, mobile device, phone, or other new internet-based gizmo that may come along down the pike.
2. The next key feature, especially if the service is offered by any of the four portal horsemen (YAGM, in no particular order)...MAKE SURE the service is NON-PARTISAN from a portal point of view.  It needs to work and play nice with the major offerings from all the blogging services.
3. The user name to the "uber-blog" should be personalizable, accessible, from anywhere on the web and/or blog directories, if the user chooses.  This is likely going to be their identity on the web, and a "personal-portal" for others to connect to them, again, if they so choose.
4. Enable monetization mechanisms a la Adsense and Adwords to be managed on any of the external blogs and the uber-blog, again at the user's discretion.
5. Provide the ability for RSS-type feeds for any sub-blog or the uber-blog.
6. While we're at it, this "Outlook for Blogs" service should also allow the user to deal with user's Comments that the user posts on OTHER, external blogs.  Specifically, the "comments" service should:  (a)  automatically keep track of the comments that the user posts on other blogs, along with the CONTEXT of the original post/s that the user is commenting on...and, (b) allow these comments and context posts to be either POSTED or DISPLAYED on the blog of the user's choice via the "Outlook for Blogs" interface.
7. "Outlook for Blogs" should be search index crawlable...i.e., to facilitate, IF the user chooses, to have any and/or all of their choosing to be indexed on the various search engine index crawlers.  This way, the content is accessible to the world, if so desired.

I could go on and on with a "feature list" for "Outlook for Blogs"...but I think you get the idea...and can probably come up with a list of your own...I'd love to hear them.

Yo, portals!  Yeah, you...especially, the ones with a capital P...you know who you are (Y!, G, M and A)...this is just the beginning of so-called "Blogs" morphing into permanent web addresses and habitats that will be the communications launchpads for your users for the rest of their lives. 

They'll be as important as email addresses are to users today, and as phone numbers (as in the SPECIFIC phone number) used to be in days gone by, especially as things like VOIP, podcasting, vid-casting, tagging and any number of future innovations get thrown into the mix.

And as mentioned above, they'll also be super important for user's to make money from their web usage and attention.  Adsense and the like are just the beginning of where all this is going from a moolah in the woolah* perspective.

Get with the program...get off the "I've got to have a generic blogging service for my users so I can check off my competitive feature check-list" band-wagon already...and INNOVATE.

If you're a start-up already doing some or any part of this, or think YOU can morph into some or any part of this, call/email me...we gotta talk.

* "woolah" is my poetically licensed term for wallet, if you haven't figured it out already, you smart blogee, you...

Comments

[James Dunn]

You mentioned the new Y360 opening in asia, but you did not post any URL to view as an example.

I personally would have liked to have clicked into a "new" 360 site to get a feel for the new features.

James Dunn
Technology Enthusiast
Political Activist
Promoter of Positive World Change