Blogger / Blogspot is a far better blogging platform for most people than Wordpress

Since my opponent has not rebuilt his arguments, I shall first summarize the arguments made thus far and left standing. BIRT: for most people, Blogger / Blogspot is a better platform than Wordpress. I had deliberately not narrowed down to either Wordpress.com (hosted by Automattic) or .org (self-hosted) as they either is a step-down. In his R1 response, my opponent seems to focus on .com, conceding apparently that most people using the self-hosted option are working (and paying) much more than they need to. My opponent did not unveil the source of his stats, probably because they come from a less than credible source, such as Quantcast, which does not measure Blogspot as well - making a comparison impossible. Studies that measured the number of active Blogger / Blogspot blogs found far more than on Wordpress.com. Furthermore in the Top 100 blogs as measured by Technorati, not even one is hosted by Wordpress.com, whereas on Blogger there are quite a few, ranging from government security blogs such as blog.tsa.gov, blog.dhs.gov to corporate blogs such as blog.twitter.com to "artsy" blogs such as PostSecret.com or Sartorialist.blogspot.com This is not a good sign for Automattic, as they make no money from self-hosted installs. Google OTOH gains a potentially larger AdSense network with every blog startup. In Round 2, I showed the following: 1. Wordpress "older system with many more updates" is in fact a liability rather than an advantage. 2. No proof is offered for that data and it is easily verifiable that there are far more Blogger / Blogspot blogs than Wordpress.com, including in the Top, where Wordpress.com has none. 3. In terms of security, I showed that Con's assertion (safest blog server ever) is false. Blogger has also better uptime than Wordpress, as the Pingdom study (link provided at the end) clearly shows. 4. By way of constructive argumentation I show a number of other advantages of Blogger, such the freedom to use whichever javascript you wish, a much higher degree of template customization (that is very easy to accomplish) and generally more freedom. All Round 2 constructive points were left to stand by Con and he did not bother reconstructing his arguments. However, apart from quoting a 2008 article, the Con introduced a few other ideas: 1. "hotbed of hatred towards the service" [Blogger] First of all, there seems to be at least as much hatred toward Wordpress: a) http://infovore.org... b) http://zsazsazsu.wordpress.com... c) http://www.realestatebloglab.com... d) http://www.facebook.com... etc Finding people who hate something is not difficult, which is why this can't possibly be considered an argument, even if, as Con seems to think, there would indeed be more people who hate Blogger than people who hate Wordpress. In that case, this would simply be a fallacy, otherwise known as Arg ad Populum. Besides, it is not even true, as evidenced by previously mentioned statistics: there are far more people using Blogger / Blogspot and there are no blogs in Top 100 hosted by Wordpress.com, yet there are quite few hosted by Blogger. Con continues by quoting an article published in 2008 by a "Wordpress consultant and theme designer" who is biased, as he has a vested interest in promoting a platform he derives income from. Even if his points were true (and they are not), they would not be contradicting my thesis, as I have repeatedly stated that Blogger has rapidly improved mostly in the past few months. These improvements could not have been taken into consideration in an article that is 2 years old. For example: - Splogs are a sign that Blogger gives users far more freedom which some choose to abuse. Back in the day, communist regimes and dictatorships have lower crime rates, but that doesn't make them better. With freedom come abusers, but I would still choose freedom over a communist prison at any time. - The commenting system has greatly improved by allowing inline form and spam control. - You can get a blog banned on other platforms including Wordpress just as easily. - Wordpress.com is also owned by someone else; the owner actually has more control over their blog with Blogger than with Wp - See the Top100 argument and examples at the end of the 2nd paragraph. - The "remarkablogger" admits he has a "WordPress-dependent livelihood", making all his claims biased and thus dubious. Con ends with an ipse dixit. No definition of "advanced" is given and no proof is provided. Personally, I don't "hate" Wordpress and I don't "love" Blogger either. Although I used both, I prefer using Blogger as it is safer, faster, gives me more freedom, costs less while may even make money and I waste less time "fighting" it. http://www.whoishostingthis.com... http://en.wikipedia.org... al