At the time that I first began experimenting with online publishing tools, Blogger and WordPress were the two major players in terms of easy-of-use and affordability (can’t get more affordable than free). Unfortunately, at that time, both tools were pretty limited in terms of functionality. They were, after all, provided for free. Over the years, several other publishing platforms emerged. Some free, some affordable, some very expensive. Balancing features and usability, WordPress (the kind from WordPress.org) emerged as my favorite (and I still strongly recommend it). However, I recently revisited Blogger and the other WordPress (from WordPress.com) to see what they’ve been up to. Turns out, they’ve been up to a lot. So, I decided to launch a couple new blogs, AttorneySync on Blogger and AttorneySync on WordPress.com.
I plan to update these as regularly as possible. But my main purpose with these blogs is to explore features. I’m wondering whether these are feature-rich enough to be viable business publishing solutions. My initial gut reaction is yes. Both offer custom domains (and Blogger’s is $10 per year and comes with google apps), custom themes, gadgets/widgets, etc.
It’s also worth noting that Facebook held F8 today and is soon to be releasing its “timeline” functionality. Thanks to TechCrunch, I was able to set my profile to timeline mode today. The reason I bring it up here is that is almost has a “blog” feel to it. It’s definitely a much more advanced publishing and sharing platform. Whether it will be right for business remains to be seen, in my humble opinion. And of course, it lives on www.facebook.com, and I haven’t seen any report of it ever going in any other direction.