Looks like Blogger made a big code push. Comments (but no threads?), post by mail (but no GPG? and requires "#end" to end the emails instead of the standard "-- "?), "profile pages" (more like Orkut than LJ's userinfo), "post pages" (like LJ's talkread), etc.
I shouldn't be so critical, but in all honesty, LJ usually has the tech advantage. Other people do the polish / usability / consistency way better, and it looks like they've got a lot of that. Here's a pretty positive review [found via dailylj]. They write: "Community features are introduced with profiles but still it is no competition for LiveJournal." Still a bit scary.