By now, you've heard the news regarding Typepad and SixApart being acquired by VideoEgg to form a new company, SAYMedia.
On the one hand, Natalie, a product manager from Typepad, assures me that the platform will be maintained and "stay the stable, lovable blogging platform that it has always been."
In a post that expresses SAY Media/SixApart's undying love for bloggers there is this quote, "[W]e will continue to support TypePad and evolve it to meet the needs of the market."
Then this..."We firmly believe that you can't build a modern media company without having a platform, and TypePad is our platform for doing that."
And from AdAge this..."[Typepad] gives us access to a content platform that we can evolve into a media platform."
Sorry, but you can't have it both ways. You can't keep it the way it has "always been" and "evolve it" into something new.
Here's my prediction...
Now that Typepad is the platform used to support a media company, coming upgrades will be those that support its initiatives, not the needs of bloggers who use the platform.
My prediction pales in comparison to what Mashable said...
"From what we’ve seen before, we bet it won’t take long for resources to be allocated towards the advertising network and away from Movable Type. It will be the beginning of the degradation of a platform that has already lost much of its relevance, despite hosting The Huffington Post and major blogs from ABC, the BBC and others.
"Advertising is where the money is for this new organization. While we don’t expect Movable Type or TypePad to go anywhere for a long time, we doubt anything new or innovative will come out of them, either."
If you see it differently, feel free to opine.
...but exactly that might be the direction of evolution of blogging itself. They still can have it both ways. At least the probability seems to be far above zero.
Posted by: Account Deleted | September 28, 2010 at 11:41 AM
But, can they have it both ways? Can they be both a software products company AND a media company? Speaking of software companies, Microsoft just announced the company is dumping its own product, LiveSpaces, in favor of using Wordpress...and MSFT is a software company.
What I'm saying is that it's one thing to have a proprietary platform on which a media company is built. It's another to also position yourself as a software products company supporting bloggers who have no interest in the media side of the equation.
Time will tell.
Posted by: Paul Chaney | September 28, 2010 at 05:23 PM
Nowadays, being a media company does not imply content production: the content comes from customers a. k. a. "users". And it should arrive if, among *other* factors, the software platform involved is reliable enough. If a customer wishes not to use full spectrum of the features of the software, one still has all of the tools necessary for textual blogging. The point here is that further innovation of the traditional blogging is impossible. I am that categorical as I have seen and discussed source code of many blog softs. What I see, over years, is that improvements involve only technical aspects, such as higher reliability, less memory, better programming style, etc. No new ideas, though...
Overall, there is still a risk and Typepad seems to gamble but these two ways (being a media *aggregation* and software production company) *should* converge.
And yes, there is no guarantee. Indeed, time will tell. But I would take a calculated risk :)
Posted by: Account Deleted | September 29, 2010 at 02:37 PM
Typepad will remain the typepad we now, just better.
Posted by: Scott | October 10, 2010 at 08:24 AM
Good thing that Typepad would remain. I wonder if this platform will continue to develop and make blogging more fun.
Posted by: Ecommerce | July 09, 2011 at 09:28 AM
SEO plugins like TypePad and Disqus have a great advantage in doing blog comments although these could be use do find follow blogs.
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