Google and Facebook piss me off!

Playwright and theater director, George S. Kaufman went back to see a musical he had directed some months before. Afterwards, he sent a note to the cast that read: Rehearsal tomorrow at 10 AM to remove all the improvements.

Can I send the same note to Blogger? And Facebook?

Warning:  I'm cranky. 

Recently, Blogger (operated by Google) flipped to a new interface. Why? I didn’t ask them to. And it’s not like they added any great new features. You still can’t play mp3s. The server still won’t fix my bad jokes.

It’s not that I’m one of those malcontents who resist any change. When my RCA Model 17-PD-8096 Black & White breaks down I will get another TV. I am happy to embrace change if it makes my life better, more interesting, or costs less. But change for change sake makes no sense to me.

This is always a big issue in the writers room, especially on multi-camera shows. You see runthroughs every day and hear the same jokes. So naturally, by the third time you hear it it’s not funny. You have to resist the urge to change it. Most of the time you’ll make a lateral change or write a worse joke.

But getting back to Blogger, they tout this new interface as a big upgrade. But now if you compose your blog entries on Word you can no longer cut and paste them in the window provided for new posts. From paragraph to paragraph the font suddenly varies wildly in styles and sizes. Blog posts look like ransom notes. And if you paste them in the HTML section and switch back to compose, all of the spaces between paragraphs are removed. You’re left with one giant block of text.  So your posts now look like Chuck Lorre vanity cards.  

Fellow blogmeisters, don’t most of you compose your posts on a word document and then just transfer them over? What good are new features when you can’t do the most basic and necessary task of all – cutting and pasting content?

Trade in your car for our new model. It’s sportier, with new design, and now has heated door panels. The only thing is, you can no longer shift the car into Drive.

Didn’t anybody at Blogger TEST this new template? Not being able to post content seems to be a pretty big bug.

Blogger has allowed users to go back to the old template (for at least another couple of weeks). Facebook won't even let you do that.

I hate the new Timeline template. It’s confusing, clunky, and makes my home page look like Martha Stewart’s To-Do list. Entries now are in two columns. This is fine if you’ve taken the Evelyn Wood Speed Reading course and you’ve trained your eyes to scan back and forth on the page. But for the rest of us, we don’t like playing visual tennis.

In theory, you are supposed to fill in your Timeline, year by year. Now there’s a little task. Go back through every year of your life and post pictures, stories, videos, and maps. Sure, it’s a lot of work, but just think how many people will be coming to your Timeline to see what shoes you bought in 1993! And again, Facebook will tell you the purpose is to better express yourself when in reality it just gives Zuckerberg more marketing data about you.

By the way, if you would like to Friend me, unfortunately I’ve reached my limit. But you can follow me on Twitter and everything I post on Facebook I post on Twitter first. And since I don’t plan to upload photos of my first haircut, you’re not missing much.

People have said to me, “You’ve had your blog for six years. Why don’t you change the template? Spiff it up. Customize it.” And my answer is always, “Why?” Will it make my content any better? Will it bring in new readers? Will Miramax finally buy the movie rights to Friday Questions? I think not. So for now I see no reason to change. Although to increase traffic I am considering changing the title of my blog to “By Kim Kardashian.” What do you think?

Yes, I realize these are not earth shattering problems but BLOG stand for Bitch Loudly Over Google.   Feel free to share your rant in the comments section.  We may not solve things but we feel better.