Is Blogger still the main entry point into blogging?

A number of friends and relatives have recently started blogging and in every case, I noticed they created their blog with Blogger. Being immersed in the world of WordPress, I found myself a little surprised that it’s still the choice for many new bloggers today.

Curious to discover more, I asked a group of them the following four questions:

1. When you started writing your blog, how and why did you decide which blogging tool to use (Blogger)?
2. What are the main things you like about Blogger now that you’re blogging?
3. What (if anything) have you found hard to use in Blogger?
4. Had you heard about WordPress before choosing Blogger? If so, what made you decide to use Blogger?

Their answers were fascinating.

To those new to blogging, Blogger was actually all they’d ever heard of. I wonder if this a confusion with the term and name; ie. to become a blogger you use Blogger? Many hadn’t heard of WordPress at all, or had vaguely heard of it but didn’t know anything about it.

They found it incredibly easy to get going and start writing blog posts and adding photos in Blogger. They felt it was great for non-technical type people to just start writing. However, the majority said they found it hard to get the rest of the blog looking how they wanted it to (design and functionality) and complained that they needed to know HTML (which many didn’t) to change things around.

As more and more of the general population (read: non-technical) find a reason or two to start blogging, does WordPress need to find a new way to reach out to beginners, or is Blogger still an appropriate starting point for someone just wanting to get going? Is WordPress still too techy for someone new to the world of blogging? And does the name WordPress need more explaining to people? (“It’s the new Blogger?”)

To me, when I compare Blogger and WordPress, there really seems no competition. WordPress is much more powerful, flexible and still easy to use. You don’t have to be a technical person to use WordPress and benefit from all the vast code under the hood.

However, there’s probably still a long way to go before WordPress is the first tool people think of when launching their first blog.