MovableType Searching For Its Roots
Six Apart had some interesting news today.
Is it a blog or an advertising network? On Monday, the line between the two got a little thinner at Six Apart, a blogging-software company that offers Movable Type and TypePad, announced a restructuring that includes three new legs: acquiring creative agency Apperceptive, launching its own advertising network and consulting services division, and opening an office in New York.
The company founders call the moves an evolution that marks a return to the roots of the company. Six Apart Services and Six Apart Media will leverage the power of the company’s blogging community to generate new revenue streams.
“Our customers have asked us for complete solutions as their blogging and social-media efforts grow,” said Chris Alden, CEO of Six Apart. “Our mission is to help everyone succeed in blogging.”
Funny. As a long time blogger (over 10 years at my main blog), I don’t see how adding an advertising network to your blogging tool is “returning to your roots”.
I have used WordPress, Drupal, and Movable Type. There’s a reason I am using WordPress, and it has everything to do with MovableType and the fact they have transplanted themselves so many times they don’t even know where their roots are anymore.
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2 Comments so far
Hi Anil,
Thanks for your comment.
In answer to your questions, yes, I have used Movable Type “recently”. In fact, I have it installed on my development system so I can use it for troubleshooting, design work, and answering customer questions.
I agree that the interface has changed a lot, and in many ways has made improvements, but to be honest, new users who choose to go with MT ask me many more questions and need a lot more help getting started than users of other software packages so in a way, it hasn’t really changed all that much.
Your second question is the part that makes me laugh a bit. Seriously. What do I want to achieve with my blog? I know there are many people out there that want to make it “big” in the blogging community with traffic or they want to make it “big” where monetization is concerned. Some of though, that have been doing this for many, many years, as I have on my main blog, and we don’t see a need to achieve either of those with our blogs.
Some of us blog simply for the love of blogging. I blog because I enjoy it, I don’t blog to see what I can get out of it. I could care less if I have 200 visitors a day or 1000. I could care less if my blogs make enough to pay the hosting bills. All I care about is having a good time, sharing information with people, and knowing that someone somewhere might have found value in something I wrote about.
Hi Michael, I wanted to drop you a line because (obviously) I disagree with the sentiment that we don’t know where our roots are. We’re a company founded by bloggers, for bloggers, and we got our start making powerful tools for people who take blogging seriously, and backing them up with the expertise to help other people succeed in blogging.
You may be reacting to the ad program, but that’s just one small part of what we’ve announced. Most of it is about helping get blogs and blog-powered communities launch, and helping bloggers meet their goals, whether that’s more traffic or more influence or, yes, more revenues from ads.
I won’t argue that we’ve experimented and learned a lot over the years, but I would argue that we’ve done so to make sure we understand all the potential that blogging can have. And I’m very proud of the fact that we haven’t been afraid to take advantage of being an independent company, which lets us explore every option for helping make the web better. That means that something like OpenID, which was invented at Six Apart, can help make the entire web work better, even if it’s not part of the way that you (or anyone else) might narrowly define “blogging”.
Anyway, I’d be happy to explain more about it, but my two final questions to you are 1. you say you’ve used Movable Type — have you used it *recently*? Because it’s changed a lot. And 2. What do you want to achieve with your blog? I bet we now how to help.