(sub. req.): A short and nice story in the latest B2.0, on Six Apart, the parent company of Movable Type, the blogging software I use for this site. I’m quoted in the story, saying that MT is now the gold standard…which is a bit like putting words in my mouth…the reporter asked me outright whether it was the gold standard, and I gave a more nuanced answer than “yes” (but then, the story is short, and I suppose they had to edit it down)…anyway, below is the whole e-mail interview I did for this story (this was done in two rounds):
Q: What do you think of TypePad?
Me: It does not do URL mapping, which is a huge, huge negative for now. They say they will be doing it soon, but they are losing (not getting) valuable customers by the bucket for now, for sure. [Ed: This interview was done some time ago, and I think they’ve already started doing it, but I am not sure]. It probably will become a major player, if only because of MT’s huge installed base…they could easily play the monopoly game: phase out MT and that would force a lot of MT people to migrate to the pricier option of TypePad.
It still is not very clear what Google wants to do with Blogger, but if it jumps full-fledged into it, which is highly unlikely, then MT/TypePad has a problem on its hands.
Since I haven’t actually used TypePad (I use MT), can’t comment on the usability etc. One thing I know, the blog publishing tools are not very useful to nano-publishers beyond a point. You have to jump in manually to take care of things like e-mail newsletters; multiple-blogs; original stories etc.
pMachine does a good job of some aspects of it, but it suffers from a low profile, hence low incentive to innovate.
Q: Will blogging ever become big in revenues?
Me: Well, blogging as a social phenomena is already becoming big…there will probably never be great money in it. It will become a part of the whole media/audience mix, with few breakout blogs which make it big. Blogging software might end up replacing expensive CMS sytems in a few years, but that will take a leap of faith, on the publishers’ side.
Q: Is it fair to say that Movable Type is the gold standard now?
Me: Well, before MT came along, there was Blogger, and GreyMatter. Both of them very similar. Then Radio Userland was already there. The reason why MT blew everyone away was it completely open-source ethic…the underlying code was not necessarily open source, but it was very easy to manipulate and write hacks for it.
And the programmers behind MT were always very responsive to incoporating any hacks into the new versions. They also pulled off a virtual coup by hiring Anil Dash, who was already very popular as a programmer and blogger.
MT was very quickly embraced by bloggers who had already sworn off Blogger…remember, Blogger always had a very polarizing effect on the blogosphere, since it was so high-profile in the beginning. But due to problems well documented (internal politics among the Pyra founders, unreliability of Blogger service etc), a lot of early pioneering bloggers moved to MT. In the blogosphere, it is the influential top one percent who define most of what is adopted. That’s what happened. It is the gold standard at this point, yet it cannot afford to rest. TypePad is a great move, but they should be releasing similar functionalities in the new MT versions. How many ASPs can you name these days? Consumer ASP market is a death valley…
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