Facebook or freedom, Part 5: A different platform changes its interface, Blogger

Even as I’ve been playing at cat-and-mouse with Facebook, Google’s Blogger has changed its interface. From my point of view it’s pretty much of a wash, in some ways it’s a modest improvement, in other’s it’s not. And, come to think of it, in one way it’s rather more inconvenient, the HTML interface for entering posts. That has forced to me add a whole other process to preparing posts; it’s not a difficult process, just tedious.

And yet, here’s the point, I don’t find this change so offensive – and I do think that’s the proper word, “offensive” – as Facebook’s change. Both changes have been forced. And while Blogger did allow me to delay the change, it has offered so many delays as FB. Moreover, in some sense I am more ‘intertwined’ with Blogger than with FB. You would think that would make me more resistant to (forced) change, not less.

What’s going on?

I don’t really know. Here’s my current guess – and I’m making it up here and now.

It is because I use Blogger more actively than Facebook that I’m more tolerant of a change in the interface. Even the simplest blog post (e.g. a tweet or a photo or two) requires a number of explicit decisions which, in turn, require that I use different tools provided to me. I’ve got to:

1. switch to post mode,
2. create a new post,
3. select a title
4. place something into the appropriate field (HTML for a tweet, an image or images for a photo post)
5. select tags for the post, and finally
6. post it.

That’s not much, and it’s done quickly, but it’s more than I have to do for many FB tasks. But even posting photos to FB somehow seems simpler, though it can be rather ‘fidgety.’ However, as I’ve said, that’s for the simplest kind of post. Long-form written posts require a fair amount of text-wrangling, which is unlike anything I do with FB.

The upshot, it seems to me at this moment, is that I treat Blogger and its interface as something out there in the world. I use it often, it’s very important to me, but it’s a tool, NOT my mind. I’m willing to adapt to changes in tools.

FB seems more like an immediate extension of my mind.  Moreover, I have much more interaction with others on FB than I do on Blogger. Thus a forced change in the interface seems very invasive. So why isn’t every one else hollering at FB over this?

I note, however, that the switch is offensive enough that one Matt Kruse has created an extension that allows you to keep to the old interface.