A blog is not a toy, this is true. But human beings like being active participants as opposed to passive observers. To this end, making your blog more interactive can make it more appealing to your readers and actually help your readers feel invested in your blog. I want to caution you though, that just adding blog toys (blog plugins and blog widgets) without giving some real thought to how they will actually enhance your users' experience isn't good enough. You must take care to select and implement only those items that will have a positive impact on your readers. And obviously, not all blogs need the same enhancements, it will be up to you the blog owner, what if any such items you install on your blog.

I thought it would be fun if we could explore some of the possibilities together. To that end I am going to install various blog tools, blog widgets and blog plugins on Blogs With Wings over the next several weeks. I'm going to point these "new toys" out to you the reader and ask you to play with them.

Follow up:

In other words you need to push them to the limits. And then, I want you to tell me what you think of them - from both a users point of view and also from the perspective of a blog owner. We'll give them a real work out and then discuss their features, possible benefits and any drawbacks that you experience. Finally I will post a poll at the end of the week and we'll put it to a vote.

Our first experiment is going to be the Wibiya Toolbar.

I'm sure you've seen them around. You can see my Wibiya Toolbar, already installed in a fixed position at the bottom of the browser window. Please play with my new blog toolbar! Push all the buttons, test all the functions, post some tweets, search my blog, subscribe to my fan page (you don't have to actually join, but if you do, bless you), test out the RSS subscribe button (you can subscribe to my feed while you're at it too, oh o.k. you don't have to that either, unless you want to) - try out everything. I have also added a Who's Online widget at the top of my left-most blog column. If it shows blog_angel online please try out the chat function on the toolbar with me. Do you think your readers would find these things useful? Did you? Do you think it would be worth it, for you personally, to install the Wibiya Toolbar on your blog?

Share in a comment, what you think of this blog toolbar. We'll all compare notes and I will write a more in-depth review once I have all your feedback and finally I will post a poll on Friday so we can take a vote on how many of you would consider installing this blog toolbar on your own site.

Blog Angel is so glad that you came out to play!