Choosing A Blogging Platform

Posted on 16. Apr, 2008 by Mike J in Blogging, WordPress

Blog platforms or also called content management systems are the foundation of your blog. First of all, it’s good to know what’s out there, at least the most popular ones. These include WordPress (my favorite) Livejournal, Xanga, Blogger, and Yahoo! 360. If you’ve never blogged before and wish to join the phenomenon, it is best to start with those that provide quick access and easy, free setups. If you already have an account in Yahoo! or Google (most Internet users already do), it’s simply a matter of logging in and going into their respective blog services. You can start your blog in minutes with hardly any effort!

Yahoo! has its 360 while Google has Blogger (formerly known as Blogspot and owned by Pyra). A big difference between Yahoo! 360 and Blogger is the advertisement content. Yahoo! 360 has practically none while Google has its own advertising service. Blogger users are given the option to use this and earn money in the process. This is called monetizing your blog.

Other blog platforms focus on the content, like Xanga. Then there’s also WordPress, which positions itself as the blog for the hip crowd. For the most part, attraction comes in having the tools and freedom to personalize the blog using background themes, colors and a generous sprinkling of your own choice of pictures and videos, some of which may come from news content provider companies. This is called embedding.

Bloggers can make their blogs as public or as private as they want to, which is how it should be for many of them, since blogs really began as personal online diaries. Many owners still use them for such record-keeping. Yahoo! 360 is used very much like a diary and a lot of people there write about their daily affairs and interests in personal profiles. There you can take little peeks into the private lives of people and most of them will appreciate and even reciprocate it. It’s how you socialize through your blog.

But most blogs already support features that can be similar to the others’. Because of this, many blogs tend to be just like any other without any distinct identity or attraction. However, blog platforms can be different in how they build user-communities. Blog platforms like Livejournal sustain their own sets of followers by building and allowing the creation of groups that cater to a wide range of characters and personalities. This is called community building.

A more casual practice of linking with other bloggers is by commenting or leaving short messages in their blogs. This promotes visitor traffic which encourages the dynamic sharing and exchange of content. Yahoo! 360 does this with a feature that links your profile with other users labeled as “friends.” Other blog platforms like Facebook and MySpace have emphasized this to a greater extent. This is called social networking and is appealing to people who wish to shine online.

The lure of blogging has produced a phenomenon of unprecedented proportions in user-generated content. There are now quite a number of blog platforms that combine the best of those mentioned here. Yuwie! is one good example. This platform allows you to earn money like in Blogger, personalize to your heart’s content like in MySpace, showcase your profile like in Yahoo 360, write about your interests like in WordPress, create specialty groups similar to those in Livejournal, and to enjoy a social network just like in Friendster (which isn’t really a blog platform).

But not all bloggers would prefer an all-in blogging environment. Most would be content to experience the simple joys of blogging and concentrate on just one or two features. Here are some blog links.

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