Bloglines latest press release left me a bit puzzled at first. In the press release Bloglines congratulates itself on having reached half a billion blog and news feed articles in their database, concluding that it makes them “the strongest blog resource on the Internet.”
Fair enough, but I wonder why have they are suddenly re-focusing on blogs when a couple of months ago they were emphasizing search and non-blog information aggregation?
Then
Two months ago Bloglines was talking up going “beyond the blog” and waxing lyrical about “The Universal Inbox”. At that time, late March, I pointed out here on Read/Write Web that Bloglines had done a makeover of their homepage – making it much more search-focused and barely mentioning its utility as a blog reader. At that time I wrote:
“…search now gets top billing on the page, ahead of blog reading and subscription. The search box is at the centre-top of the page, the search component of the circular graphic is at the top of the circle, and most of all the introductory statement mentions search first:
“Bloglines is the most comprehensive, integrated service for searching, subscribing, publishing and sharing news feeds, blogs, and rich Web content. It’s free and easy-to-use.”
Now
Fast-forward to June 2005 and search has now been relegated to the middle-right box, with “Subscribe” taking its (probably rightful) place in the centre-top box. This time I’ve taken a screenshot 😉 Also interesting to note the introductory statement now reads:
“Create a personal Bloglines page loaded with the freshest news about the things you love.”
A personal page…thatsoundsfamiliar. Oh yes, it’s what Yahoo, Google and Microsoft have all been busy doing lately!
Now my purpose here isn’t to poke fun at Bloglines, because there’s nothing wrong with them re-emphasizing blogs and subscription over search. Especially when the big Internet companies (Google, MS, Yahoo) are beginning to encroach into what used to be Bloglines’ almost monopolised territory! Remember Bloglines was the only major web-based RSS Newsreader for a long time – all of 2003 and most of 2004.
Still it’s curious that Bloglines has ‘gone back to its roots’ and is hyping itself again as a blog resource. Could part of that be because Bloglines search “continues to disappoint”, as PaidContent.org put it? That’s certainly a factor. But mainly it’s because Bloglines/Ask Jeeves doesn’t want The Big 3 stealing all their blogging mojo, so they’re re-asserting their “blog resource” chops and at the same time staking their claim as a ‘personal homepage’ – the current trend among the big players.
