Note: I wrote this answer on Quora a while back.

I love writing and there are a ton of things that can be done to change and improve the state of blogging platforms drastically.

Here are some that I feel are important:

  • A standardized format for individual entries across all/most blogging platform. For most geeks this is Markdown. With the advent of Dropbox and other Cloud services something as simple as a .txt file could become that format.

  • A simpler way to write: It is funny that most of today's blogging platform's text editor is more powerful than some word processors. It needs to be simplified. I really like what Svbtle by Dustin Curtis is trying to be and lot of the finer ideas behind it.

  • Mobile version: No, I do am not expecting someone to write 500 word articles on mobile (tablets excluded) but it should be able to jot down thoughts or just snap a picture and post it.

  • Make it easy to "embed" my social content: I would prefer this to be inherently built in the app in a fashion similar to Storify so that I can quickly choose a picture I just uploaded to Instagram and make it the latest post on my blog. Or an answer I just wrote on Quora?

  • Showing other relevant content from the blogosphere: If I am reading or writing a blog about a topic, why can the blogging platform not show me what my friends have written about it OR make it easy to do prior research.

  • Democratize Art Direction: Till now art directed or uniquely styled entries for each post have been done by designers mostly. Why can this not be made universal? Jux does this at a basic level for content writers but this really should be more simple. It should essentially be drag and drop.

  • Social: The whole social angle in today's blogging systems is "start from scratch". But why not make it easy or maybe just possible to include users/things/references in posts. Kind of like Quora.

  • Search: For most blogging platform the search is broken. Make it better?

  • Comments: I do not wish to open a can of worms but the comments on the web are broken. This is the biggest reason I do not have comments on my own site, even if I am losing on a ton of meaningful conversation.

  • Central CMS for Enterprise: While not a current problem but you could think of a dashboard for small companies to maintain their Twitter/Facebook and Blog. While this is not directly related to the question, but if you think of twitter and facebook timeline as evolved form of communication in post blogging world, then it makes sense.

  • Analytics: It is kind of funny how analytics have not yet become a part of blog engines. Why do I need to add a script from Google Analytics. I understand the part about focus but it is still complicated for non geek users. Also if this were a part of blogging engine, it would be far more powerful IMHO. Example, people reading. People who quoted the article or a part of it. Mentions on Twitter etc.

  • Discovery: Writing a blog post is one part, but can the blogging platform make it easier for others to discover what you wrote, without the constant expectation of writing more?

  • The CMS and the Blog should be one: You should feel as if you are writing ON YOUR SITE, for only then can your words do true justice to how people will read/experience the content. Here is a first draft of what I plan to make my blog's CMS as. I am sure you can simplify it further with more javascript magic. For now I still have to add custom CSS links and tags to apply non default stylings to blog posts but this should be simpler.

Blog CMS

  • Maybe find a niche for longform content: While not a CMS' fault, the world can do with more longform bloggers. So maybe the blog can help in that. Say allow for rumination of ideas or celebrate longform with the theme and templates that it comes with.

  • Better Typography: How about smart quotes, en and em dashes and a bunch of other smaller stuff like paragraph indentation, rhythm of typography. An average person should not have to worry about this when writing. It should just work

These are some I can think of right now. I will keep adding more as I think of them.