Monday, September 27, 2010
In Other Words, Hello
I read with great interest last week's announcement from Ben and Mena Trott, co-founders of Six Apart, Ltd., that they had merged their shop with VideoEgg. After the dust settles, the new entity will be known as "SAY Media, a modern media company." Anil Dash's "SAY, Goodbye to Six Apart," for example, sheds light on his part in this transition. I haven't looked too deeply into what motivates SAY Media; give it a week, right? It's difficult to really know such things, anyway. Commenters responding to the smattering of Six Apart's end-times disclosures suggest SAY Media is interested foremost in monetizing blog traffic by way of advertising. My first thought: best of luck.
My next thought is, Earth Wide Calamity!, this blog runs on Movable Type, one of Six Apart's first blogging systems. If Six Apart disappears, will Movable Type also vanish into thin air? Early, findable answers are exactly what you would expect them to be: no, no, of course not. Movable Type and Typepad are making the transition right along with the Trotts. Nevertheless, there is a bit of anxious buzz floating around that SAY Media is concerned with easing the Typepad subscribers through the transition, but they don't appear to be especially forthright with promises about Movable Type. The word on Movable Type is, in effect, "mum." In fact, the SAY Media blog's latest entry has as its title, "We Love Bloggers, We Love Typepad, We Want to Hear From You,"--a hand-patting "it will be okay" from Matt Sanchez, the new company's CEO, who, curiously enough, has not himself responded to the comments.
For my own part in this anticipating of the worst, I'll just hang around, waiting and seeing, until there is more definitive cause for concern (e.g., if this entry does not publish because SAY Media has corrupted my MT installation). Another way, as with much change-anxious worrying, rehearse a dozen times with a succession of deep breaths, "nothing happens."
Posted by Derek Mueller at September 27, 2010 9:20 AM
to On Weblogs
So, perhaps a wordpress install in your near future?
It's kind of a shame because while I have been using wordpress happily for some time, I do think that there's something to be said for the value of multiple platforms in the marketplace. Or maybe collapsing down to "the winner" is just sort of inevitable?
Posted by: Steve Krause at September 27, 2010 10:47 PMYeah, maybe. Although I don't like how complicated the CSS can be with Wordpress and Drupal. As you know, my love for Movable Type has everything to do with the fact that I can get it to do pretty much whatever I want it to do. It'll be years before I could say that about the others.
Posted by: Derek at September 28, 2010 9:00 AM