Blogger vs. Xanga

Alright so this is a little pet-peeve of mine htat was just stirred by another blog I read. They commented on wanting to have one site that allows ryou to chat, blog, and email all at once. Gmail does this...

I never understood the popularity of the Xanga blogging system. First thing I hate about Xanga: limited customability of the way your site looks. Sure you can add a background picture, and use custom colors, but it you want to go beyond that you either have to pay for premium or use another blog system. Second thing: pictures have problems... alot. When I have seen people publish photos on Xanga there have been tons of link issues, etc. Also Xanga limits the number of pictures you can upload (total MB usage). Third reason: I have to be logged in to post. many other services offer posting by email and other methods. Fourth: Ads. If you are using the free version of Xanga, there are ads at the top of the page which are loud (color-wise), obnoxious, and distracting. Many of these problems become fixed if you upgrade to one of their paid versions, but who wants to pay for something that is free in other places?

Bloger on the other hand, deals with all of these issues. On Blogger you are allowed to post custom HTML or have a variety of free templates (designed by a professional I consider to be one of the top web designers) to choose from. Blogger also provides an easy to use photo upload tool that places the pictures in the post whereever you want. Plus, it allows you to upload any number of photos you want. The cost for this? FREE. I don't even have to log in to blogger to make a post! I have an number of options available to me. I can set up audio blogging, where I call a phone number and record a message to be placed on my blog, I can set up an email account to send posts to, or I can even post to my blog with a text-message on a phone with pictures. All of those options are also free. Blogger has no ads, only a thin bar at the top for navigating to other blogs, searching, or flagging objectionable content. Even then you can choose the color of the bar so that it matches your site, and if you host your blog on another server, (like mine) you have the option to remove that bar. In conclusion I personally like blogger for the features it has, and hate Xanga for the features it doesn't... (just so that you know, blogger will allow you to make your blog private, meaning only people who know the url of your blog can read it. not as closed as Xanga protected posts, but I hate that feature anyway...)