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Blogger has finally seen an upgrade. One of the most notable upgrades, is a category system –or labels, as Google likes to call them. This is similar in function, to that of Labels in Gmail.

There are also plenty of other new features. Check out the tour to see them.

The new “beta” version of Blogger, so far is by invitation only. Sound familiar? Does this mean that this new version of Blogger, will be in beta for years, similarly to Gmail?

My old Blogger blog, does not yet have the functionality of the new beta service.

There is a way to test out the new version of Blogger: by creating a new account, using your Google account. So, if you want to start a new blog, this is great, albeit, buggy. However, wordpress.com has also seen it’s share of bugs, so it isn’t as if this would be anything new.

I tried it out just for fun. It’s pretty cool. Guess what it has? It has drag & drop widgets, just like wordpress.com, but Google calls them layouts. Unlike wordpress.com, you can also customize the fonts, font-colors, and link-colors. This is something which I have suggested to the developers at wordpress.com numerous times. For some odd reason, the only response to this has been the following:

• This would be too dangerous to allow this type of customization.
• Perhaps you ought to switch to a hosted version of WordPress.

Now, since I espouse The Power of Truth, I have to ask questions. Is this not possible for wordpress.com because it would be too dangerous, or is it because wordpress.com does not know how to do it?

The moral of this story folks, is that I love wordpress.com, and they have been good to me. But, if they are going to let Blogger one up them at this point, something needs to happen. Action needs to be taken.

I propose, first and foremost, free custom css editing. This will solve part of it. However, there will still be a lack of layout customization. Canvas can fill this void.

It is my humble opinion that wordpress.com ought to do something about this soon. It seems to me that the vast majority of the bloggers using wordpress.com are not brand new bloggers. I’m pretty sure that a huge majority of us came from Blogger, due to lack of functions –most notably categories. Well, now Blogger has this, plus it offers more functionality.

Currently, Blogger Beta, is still in a testing stage. However, eventually there will be an ability to use the drag & drop editor and the raw HTML editor –to allow the ultimate in customization.

I am not suggesting that wordpress.com allow HTML editing, but they really ought to offer more customization –and for free. Otherwise, I don’t see why people won’t just go back to their old Blogger blog, eventually.

Bloggers obviously want the best service, for the best price. The best price happens to be free. That being said, the best free service is going to be the one that offers the most satisfaction to it’s users. Right now, I see this as wordpress.com, but now that Blogger has taken the initiative to improve itself, wordpress.com may be skating on thin ice, when it comes to being the best platform for free blogs.

I hope that wordpress.com understands this. Once again, the very best way that they can trump Blogger’s improvements, would be to allow custom .css for free. Otherwise, I do not necessarily see why new bloggers would want to come to wordpress.com, rather than Blogger.

WordPress.com always introduces nice new little features and functions. These are great, but I think I speak for just about everyone, when I say that we would all much rather have more control over the look of our blogs, than many of the other far less important improvements.

Matt, please do the right thing. I know that you have noticed. The question now is, how will you react?