Les Jones

Blogging > Changes at Blogger

I switched from Blogger Pro to Movable Type this weekend, so this no longer applies to me, but this email arrived this morning from Blogger. They're giving users of the free Blogger service most of the features that were part of the pay Blogger Pro service. Here's the email I received:

Hi there. Evan Williams here, co-founder of Pyra/Blogger.

I wanted to give you a heads-up about something we're announcing
shortly: We're no longer offering Blogger Pro as a separate product
and we're folding most of the features into regular (free) Blogger.

It's sad but true. (Except it's not really that sad.)

Don't worry - nothing you paid for is going away. And while you won't be
charged, your subscription is still valid. You will continue to have
access to features like RSS and post-via-email that are still not
in the free version. You'll also have priority support from our
expanded team and new support system: http://help.blogger.com .

More importantly, I want to stress that we couldn't have gotten to
where we are today without you. Pro subscribers helped keep us going
as a struggling start-up, when servers and bandwidth were at an
extreme premium. We wanted to keep basic Blogger free, but we needed
to start charging in order to keep the lights on. So we built new
things that would appeal to some Blogger users (namely, you).

Thanks to supportive people like yourself, this plan allowed us to
grow and build a better service -- and, eventually, get us to much
more stable ground. We're eternally grateful, and I hope you were
happy with the relationship, as well.

Today, as you may know, Blogger's situation is much different.
For one thing, we're part of Google. (If you missed that announcement,
check the FAQ: http://www.blogger.com/about/blogger_google_faq.pyra).
Google has lots of computers and bandwidth. And Google believes blogs
are important and good for the web.

This is a good thing.

So we're in the fortunate position of being able to give back to our
users. Specifically, we want give all of you who paid for Pro,
a Blogger hoodie as a way of saying thanks. Just go to
http://new.blogger.com/sweatshirt.pyra by October 1, 2003 to claim yours.

We feel this move will be good for all Blogger users, and we're
excited about the many new things we have in the pipeline. Stay tuned.

Thanks again,
Ev.