Hub of Boston Bloggers Set Loose
February 4, 2009
Universal Hub is well-named, since it’s the center of the Boston blogosphere. The nut that holds the Hub together is Adam Gaffin. Adam has just lost his day job.
I strongly recommend UH for anyone interested in things Bostonian (or in what I used to call “the greater Cambridge area”), or in how to run a city hub blog. I strongly recommend AG to any media organization looking for talent. In a perfect world wide web, AG would be able to make a living from UH.
LiveJournal on Life Support?
January 6, 2009
LiveJournal has just shed a substantial proportion of its 28 employees. Reports differ as to how many have been let go. As usual, ValleyWag tends toward the negative.
The bubble in social networking has burst, decisively. LiveJournal, the San Francisco-based arm of Sup, a Russian Internet startup, has cut about 20 of 28 employees… product managers and engineers were laid off, leaving only a handful of finance and operations workers — which speaks to a website to be left on life support.
Executives at Six Apart, the blog-software company which sold LiveJournal to Sup, are happily counting the money… they should consider themselves lucky that Vox, the LiveJournal knockoff it started, hasn’t been more popular…
LiveJournal, founded by engineer Brad Fitzpatrick in 1999, predated most blogging services and social networks, and anticipated many of their features… But Fitzpatrick never figured out how to turn it into a business. Instead, he sold it to Six Apart, which didn’t have much more luck.
On the basis of history, I tend to believe the negative. I certainly echo Nicholas’ advice to back up your LJ, if you have one.
This is sad. LJ has for years integrated blogging and social networking. But somehow that integration remains one of the big issues in social media.
So, it looks as though there will be an exodus from LJ soon. Where will the people end up? If I were running WordPress.com, I’d buy more servers, and make social networking an even higher priority than it already is…
Oxite Doesn’t Excite
December 9, 2008
Oxite is an open source, standards compliant, and highly extensible content management platform, Microsoft’s Jeff Sandquist posted yesterday. So is this Microsoft taking on Google/Blogger, Automattic/WordPress, Six Apart/Movable Typepad, Acquia/Drupal, and so on?
No it isn’t. Jeff and his colleagues “are hopeful that this lightweight sample allows folks to get rolling with ASP.NET MVC and understand the importance of web standards.” That’s worthy stuff, but it does make clear that Oxite isn’t an attempt to compete with Blogger, or with anything. Rather, it’s a sample application.
Globe on Econoblogs
December 7, 2008
Interesting article on the conversation about economic policy in today’s Globe.
A fast-moving, highly informed economics blogosphere… [has] helped to democratize policy making, throwing open the doors on the messy business of everything from declaring a recession to structuring the most expensive government bailout in history.
The online article, like too many at the Globe, fails to include links to the blogs it discusses. However, it is accompanied by a guide to economics and finance blogs, so the failure is not complete.
Business Cards For Bloggers
October 19, 2008
I have a recently-developed thing about business cards for bloggers (and other web publishers). If you share this interest, you might want to check out Brian Yerkes’ Business Cards of Bloggers gallery.
Here’s my contribution to his gallery, unworthy though it is to appear alongside some of the masterpieces there. The unworthiness arises, not only from my design, but also from the already-bewailed thin white stripe down the left-hand side of the card.
On a related note, I am thinking of becoming a value-added reseller of business cards for bloggers and the like. Criteria include: quality of product; drop shipping direct to customer; willingness to give a decent cut to the VAR. Suggestions welcome…
On OnSugar
October 10, 2008
OnSugar is a new blogging platform. I’m not sure that the world and its web need another one, and my days of taking every opportunity to try out new blogging services are behind me. But Mashable Doriano’s use of terms such as sweet-looking and social somehow persuaded me to head over to OnSugar.
Hence the new blog, Sweeter Way. My initial reaction to the service itself was that it reminds me of Six Apart’s Vox, in that it emphasizes connection with other users of the service, and it encourages multimedia.
So, why launch OnSugar, in these difficult times and into the crowded social blogging space? The space is crowded, not just by already-there services such as Vox, but also by the social direction that “traditional” blogging platforms such as WordPress are taking.
Part of the answer is that OnSugar “only” needed to be launched, rather than developed. It is the in-house blogging platform for Sugar Inc., which has 17 sites. More, it has 8 million monthly unique visitors, and so there’s an “engaged community” of potential OnSugar bloggers there at launch.
The Sugar Inc. vision is to be the definitive online media company for trendsetting, passionate women ages 18-44. Once I found that, I shared Doriano’s view that OnSugar “might appeal more to women.” But whereas he sees two reasons, “look and feel,” I see 8 million. That said, I’m not sure how Sugar Inc. plans to make money from OnSugar; I’ll leave that open for comments, and perhaps for future posts.
Mollom: Milestones and Money
October 9, 2008
Mollom is one of four spam comment fighting services that I’ve covered before. Mollom has enough recent news to merit a fresh post. Centernetworks’ Allen Stern summarized as follows: Mollom Leaves Beta, Hits 10 Million Blocked Spams, Launches Paid Plans.
The Mollom site provides further detail. Dries posted that: Drupal is still the main platform for users with Mollom subscriptions, with Joomla! coming second, and WordPress third. The pricing page contrasts two levels of service: Free and Plus. Plus costs 30 Euros a month (which, at current exchange rates, is about $40, rather than the $30 Allen quotes).
Bloggers at Bella Luna
August 20, 2008
Last night a few dozen Boston-based bloggers went to a party at Bella Luna in Jamaica Plain. Bella Luna is the restaurant above the Milky Way; or, to put it another way, the Milky Way is the bowling alley below Bella Luna.
The occasion was the recent arrival of executive chef Jacob Zachow, and the new menu (so new that, as I type this the following day, the web site still shows the old menu). As I told Jacob, I was particularly impressed with the veggie burger, with its combination of black beans and cumin. I’d have it again, and I don’t often say that about veggie dishes. That said, I enjoyed the pork even more.
My thanks to the management and staff of Bella Luna, to Image Unlimited, with whom they worked on the event, and to my fellow bloggers, all of whom made it fun. I was hoping to meet Universal Adam, whose post alerted me to the event, but I don’t think he made it.
I am of course in favor of free food for bloggers. Having said that, if I had anything negative to report about the food or the party, I would do so in this post. But the most negative thing I can say is that Bella Luna will be moving to a space further away from my Roslindale home (albeit still in Jamaica Plain, and so not too far away).
Why the Fuss About Social Blogging?
August 15, 2008
Recent posts at ReadWriteWeb, at GigaOm, and elsewhere discuss the “social” direction that blogging is taking. The discussion seems strange, given that blogging has always been social.
One way of explaining it is that:
- Blogging is conversation (Naked or otherwise).
- Conversation = content + connection.
- There’s a current emphasis on connection. Connection is of course the defining feature of social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
- Connection is also a feature of blogging software, such as Movable Type and WordPress.
It is indeed on Movable Type and WordPress that the RWW and GOm posts focus. I’ll keep that focus, despite comments that Drupal and Elgg also belong in the conversation. But I’d like to make the comparison between Movable Type and WordPress, just as I’ve made elsewhere the comparison between Six Apart and Automattic, the respective firms behind MT and WP.
Here’s what Anil Dash of Six Apart recently announced.
Movable Type Pro lets you turn any site into a full social publishing platform, combining all of Movable Type’s abilities as a blogging and CMS with social networking features like profiles, ratings, user registration, forums, following, and more.
Six Apart offer three platforms: MT, TypePad, and Vox. There is no TypePad counterpart to MT Pro (although there is something called TypePad Pro). Vox is, and has been from the start, a “social blogging” platform, with its content and connection features sharing top billing.
While Six Apart offer three platforms, Automattic offer one: WordPress. While Six Apart’s MT Pro moves social networking up alongside blogging, Automattic’s BuddyPress moves social networking up in front of blogging: BuddyPress will move the main focus of WordPress MU away from blogs, and onto the actual member profile.
While MT Pro includes forums, BuddyPress doesn’t. That’s not because Automattic consider forums unimportant; it’s because they offer specialized forum software: bbPress.
Now to try and summarize the different ways in which the two blogging firms are increasing emphasis on connection. Six Apart offer social blogging in two forms: MT Pro for the enterprise, and Vox for the individual. Automattic offers blogging in the form of WordPress, and social networking in the form of BuddyPress.
Of course, summarize often means (over-)simplify, and there’s a lot of simplification above. For example, BuddyPress is essentially Multi-User WordPress plus plugins and themes, so the relative emphasis on content (blogging) and connection (social network) can be calibrated as appropriate.
I leave any further clarifications to this account of social blogging to comments…
