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Now that someone has actually

Posted January 10, 2002 5:39 PM.

Now that someone has actually broken the news on a site (rather than just on a mailing list), I think it's time I gave my opinion on the proposed "Premium Blogger" that is rumoured to cost $30 a year. Bear in mind that at the time of posting, there has been no word from Pyra on this app. There's a discussion over at Metafilter, but here's my take on it as posted to UKBloggers:

"The big question then is going to be do you have any idea about how this premium stuff is going to work?

I had a long conversation with megnut when she was still with blogger about what their plans were with Blogger Pro - which this sounds very much like - and the big issue seemed to be what you're getting people to pay for...

For example - are you paying for a premium membership with as many blogs as you like? In which case how do you stop people disseminating the log-in details to run a hundred blogs from the same account? If you ARE running a premium blog - do other people who are allowed to post on the same blog have to pay to use it? Is there a difference between a user who runs fifty blogs each with a thousand posters on each and one who runs one weblog which he posts to every month. Etc. etc.

"There are many more questions - particularly for people whose sites consist of several blogs bolted together...

"I'd pay in an instant. Particularly for extra functionality. But I'm interested in what the service will include. I think there are various ways they could go... five blogs perhaps with a maximum of twenty users between them (for example) would be a good system as far as I was concerned. But there WILL be consolidation of individuals using them.

"Having said that it's still better to have three users paying $10 each than three users paying nothing..."

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