Since we launched MSN Spaces I've found it interesting to see how our competitors have reacted by producing competing services or features. First it was Yahoo! 360 which showed up 4 months after we went into widespread beta with a press release whose primary pitch -- an innovative new service that allows people to easily share what matters most to them and keep connected with the people they know -- was a lot like ours.

Now according to the Infoworld article Google ponders Blogger, Gmail integration we find out

Google is also evaluating an enhancement that lets users natively upload images to their blogs from within the Blogger interface, Stone said. Currently, images can be posted to Blogger via e-mail or using other indirect methods, such as Google's Hello image-transmission service. "There is a button there now [in the Blogger interface for image uploading] so we're working on making that a useful button," Stone said. "We're looking into that right now."
...
Although users can password protect their Blogger blogs with third-party software or services, Blogger currently doesn't offer native ways for users to limit access to their blogs. However, Google is mulling over the possibility of adding some native privacy features, such as the ability for users to create private groups and that way control who can view their blogs, Stone said.
...
Google introduced the latest enhancement to Blogger last week, when it launched Blogger Mobile, a feature that lets users create a new blog and post to it from mobile devices. "There's lots of people walking around with little blogging appliances which others may call mobile phones," Stone said.

Although it is interesting that most of the features described in the article is stuff that we shipped last year, what I find even more interesting is that they aren't pre-announcing any features that aren't playing catchup with MSN Spaces or Yahoo! 360. I wonder if this is because they want to underpromise and overdeliver or whether this means 2005 is the year Blogger ends up playing catchup with the rest of the industry. Only time will tell.


 

Thursday, 12 May 2005 19:40:32 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Dare,

I just recently got into active blogging after a long period of reading other's posts. The first service I tried was MSN Spaces, then I went on to evaluating other blog services (just the free ones ;-).

Although I initially grumbled about MSN Spaces, at this time I'd have to give MSN Spaces the top grade. I hope to complete my evaluation soon and publish it at http://spaces.msn.com/members/waltl/. A big reason for the high marks is the integration already in the service and its ease of use. I see a lot of potential in the MSN Spaces software ecosystem to take the features and accessability up a couple of notches, if not a quantum leap.

So if those other guys are following you, I'll be happy to cheer you on to greater things to stay ahead of the pack. It will be fun. Now if I can only get back to doing the software for my personal website instead of Spaces blog entries all the time...
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