Xanga vs. LiveJournal vs. Blogger

When I got started with blogging I only really knew of two services - blogger and livejournal. I don't know exactly why I chose to go with blogger (it might have been because Amul was using it), but as time goes on I am getting happier with my decision.

Originally my blogger account didn't have an RSS feed, didn't have comments, and it was the free version of what blogger offered (at some point you could pay for extra features and to remove adds, etc - but by the time I got my account, I couldn't find the place to upgrade it). All of that has improved, and I don't really have any complaints about blogger these days.

LiveJournal was the other option I knew of at the time, and again, I don't really know why I didn't choose it - but I can tell you why I wouldn't choose it now :). Actually, it's not all that bad. In LJ you can add people to your list of 'friends', which is more than just a blogroll - you can create entries that can only be viewed by your friends list. I'm not a fan of creating accounts just to be able to view things, so I have resisted creating an empty LJ account so far. It still allows you to post anonymous comments and have an RSS/ATOM feed. Most of my info on this came from a discussion where I was taunting Daisie about this very policy, so I may have missed something in my eagerness to make a joke at the time.

I went on Xanga for the first time today to try to find sites for some of the people I teach with, and unfortunately I had to register to even try searching (at least it didn't take long). Even after that, it wouldn't let me search some things unless I was a "premium member", and so I looked for another way. I originally thought that they didn't have RSS feeds, but a quick google search turned up the answer. Ok, so I don't have as many things to be upset about...hmm. Well, browsing through random sites, there seems to be a large proportion of annoying designs - music that plays when you open the page, background pictures that make it impossible to read the text, etc... so I guess that's something :)

Of course, none of the people I work with have sites with that problem. Seriously. No, I mean it.