Goodbye, Blogger

So Google is going to re-brand Blogger within the next six weeks as it rolls out Google+, its Facebook rival and tries to become king of all that is social media.

Makes sense to me. As does the rebranding of its Picasa photo service which, frankly, is so buried as far as social media is concerned I’m only aware of it because I occasionally peruse my Picasa web album looking for photos I can re-use from previous blog posts.

Google Blogs, though. Well, I suppose Apple has its i-Everything, so why not a Google-Everything as well.

What’ll be most interesting is to see if the rebranding is also packaged with a push to join Google+, or if there will be compatability issues between the rebranded service and rival Facebook. I have yet to see Google+, but I hope that the Plus and Blogs remain distinct because, as far as I’m concerned, the blog and the social network aren’t exactly the same thing.

I like that I can customize my blog, for instance, giving it a distinct Mr. Fweem feel. And though I link many of my blog posts on Facebook, I’ve never looked at Facebook as a blogging tool, as when I go to my blog I want to see my stuff only (yeah, I can do that with a Facebook profile, but it’s not the same. It’s all too short-coupled).

More than likely I won’t notice a thing. I didn’t notice, for instance, when they rolled out their “major overhaul” of Blogger earlier this year. Oh, I may have noticed a few conveniences, but nothing that really stood out.