we're here to compete

(Update 3/12/08:  Wow, I guess all this talk about competition struck a nerve.)

Since when does "competing" equal "playing dirty"? 

Yesterday we ran a post on movabletype.com that touts the advantages of Movable Type over the soon-to-be-released (any day now) Wordpress 2.5. Was the title of the post ("A Wordpress 2.5 Upgrade Guide") cheeky? Sure. Was the post timed for the release of 2.5? Of course! But was the post an accurate representation of the capabilities of Movable Type? Absolutely.

In response (as I'm sure you've seen by now if you read TechCrunch), Matt Mullenwegg twittered "six apart is getting desperate - and dirty." 

I don't call our post desperate or dirty -- I call it competing.

At Six Apart we've been working extraordinarily hard on MT, and we're proud of the product. Over the past year it's been great to see the platform energized and have loads of bloggers moving to MT -- and in some cases even coming back after leaving us for a while. And as Anil pointed out in the post, we know we're not done -- we have an ambitious development schedule for the MT platform, which has evolved from a professional blogging tool to a powerful social networking platform.

So yes -- we're going to compete. And we're going to name check our competition in blog posts when we feel it's warranted. Matt shouldn't have a problem with that -- after all, he has a long history of name checking Six Apart and our products...including characterizing one of our most prominent TypePad bloggers as a "sharecropper." (I'll leave the value judgment re. that particular choice of words as an exercise for the reader.)

Finally, if you're a dyed-in-the-wool Wordpress fan and we have no chance of ever convincing you to switch to a Six Apart product, that's fine. But you should recognize that having a strong, healthy and evolving set of alternatives to those provided by Automattic is only good for blogging. As Anil said in his post, all of us at Six Apart are here because we take seriously our responsibility to invent the future of blogging. We're doing that with our products, we're proud of the work we're doing, and we're here to compete.

Comments

[Alaina Browne]

[this is good]

[Beau Smith]

+1 - Awesome. Talked to Matt the other night in Austin... he actually mentioned he was quite impressed with MT4. Go figure.

[Arvind Satyanarayan]

[this is good]

[.tiff]

[this is good]

[Rahul Ganjoo]

[this is good]

[Rafe]

I thought Anil's post was brilliant (and brilliantly timed). No foul on the play.

[Michael Sippey]

@rafe, thanks! i'll pass that on to anil.

@arvind, @tiff, @rahul, @beau, @alaina [y'all are good]

[docflo]

I ran my blog with MT4 for a while, but I switched back to Wordpress because I constantly got vague server errors and no one could help me.
Quips Anil:
One of the signature features of Movable Type is perhaps the most hidden: Our excellent support.
Where did you hide it?

[Jan Karlsbjerg]

Well said.

The final paragraph was the take-away message I got from Anil's blog post yesterday.

[Michael Sippey]

@docflo -- you can always check out http://www.movabletype.com/support/ for information about how to get support from us! our customers can file tickets 24 hours a day, and we have a great staff who helps people resolve issues like the one you had.

there's also a great community of movable type users at http://www.movabletype.org/ , so if you're interested in help from the community, that's a good place to start.

[Michael Sippey]

@jan -- that's great!

[jeff reine]

Let me be even more frank: the tweet was ridiculous and shows just how immature the new media business really is in some quarters.

Go ahead and turn on your TV today... or open up a magazine... or tune into FM radio. Count the number of commercial messages and sales pitches that specifically compare one product to another. Do you think *any* of the thousands of employees of any of the companies involved in those ads even thinks twice that the ad was 'dirty'? No. They get back to work and build a better product, come up with a better marketing plan, go about lowering their costs, etc. etc. etc.

But because we, in this little bubble world, attach our names and personalities to the commercial message, it gets personal And people feel attacked... or that it's just, "not fair."

Comparative advertising is not only fair it's highly, highly effective. (Perhaps the most effective form of advertising not involving an attractive woman, animal or baby.) Companies can highlight the specific strength of their products, and consumers get the specific information they need to make an informed choice.

On the flip side, I will say that typically market followers use comparative advertising to claw away at the leader's market share (see: Avis' "we try harder" vs. Hertz; any Hyundai ad nipping at JapanCo's carmakers; or Miller Lite specifically "name checking" Bud Light). So perhaps WordPress should have flipped the script?

Either way: tweet less. compete more. And don't worry about what the kids at the other lunch table are saying about you. You're plenty cool with your peeps.

[rey]

[thisisgood]

[Adam]

[this is good]

[aa]

[this is great]

[Benjamin Trott]

[this is good]

[Steve]

Well said, Anil and Michael both. If you can't handle the snark, get out of the intarwebs.

[franky]

No matter how much I hate Matt (like WP tho), I would be more tempted to support (evangelize even) MT, if a comment on that entry would be publicized instead of moderated. Oh well, I'll remember: bash Matt on a well read blog and you get a call out on his blog. Try to add constructive thoughts to MT and your comment gets suffocated.

I guess I'll stick with WP.

[Michael Sippey]

@franky -- a comment on the movabletype.com blog post? i know anil's been watching that closely and publishing everything that comes in -- including a post by matt himself! if you have commented there check back, i'm sure it will be there.

[franky]

@michael,

A comment published after I commented already had been released. Oh well, Matt at least is know for his moderation policy. I'm disappointed... Even though I might have had some drinks tonight, I thought I had some good points. And I'll gladly send you a (resized) screenshot of the preview if wanted.

[Michael Sippey]

@franky -- send me a screenshot of that preview if you can. msippey@gmail.com.

[Yann]

[bien dit!]

[deb schultz]

Thanks for being you Sippey

[Anil Dash]

Franky, I apologize for being slow to post your comment -- it's up now. OpenID-authenticated comments get published automatically, while unauthenticated ones don't, and I was on a plane while yours was submitted. It's up now!

[Michael Sippey]

@deb -- thanks! i don't know how to be anyone else.

[Charlie Schick]

Phwah. Platform Passion. Hawking your stuff is not a crime. Telling the truth is not a crime.

Can you reason people out of their passion? Maybe not. But there are a ton more folks (like me) who do not have any passion for either platform and make choices based on their own rational decisions. Any honest and open discussion is welcome.

You guys did nothing wrong. Don't let it get to you.

[Jonathan Peterson]

Even though I prefer the generation of static html model, I switched to WP because it was open source and because I'd rather hack at PHP than perl.

I've installed and used both MT and WP for a couple years each and BOTH are nice systems with solid support and development ecosystems.

But as long as there are open source versions of each and real revenue generating business models for the parent companies, competition between them can only be good for the larger blogging ecosystem as a whole.

[Jonathan Peterson]

oh yeah, and I know there is now an open source MT. Which is awesome.

[Steve Calderon]

Anil's response (via Twitter) said it all. An appropriate response by Matt would have been to emphasize how his product might be a better choice for someone, or how Anil's original post wasn't accurate. I guess if you can't pull that off logistically and honestly, then you get desperate yourself, and just whine about getting served.

Matt: Don't hate, innovate!

[Dr. Mike Wendell]

Matt's done some very nasty things as well in his past but, of course, none of his fan boys will ever see it as such and Toni will always give him a free pass to do what he wants.

This is just yet another example of the lack of maturity that Matt is know for.

[Lloyd Budd]

If you think WordPress is "provided by Automattic", you don't understand WordPress and how we and most other open source products operate. WordPress is nothing without the participation of the community.

As I've no response on the Movable Type post, nor any progress the numerous times I wrote Anil, can you please help customers trapped on TypePad. You can't claim that your team hasn't heard of this issue, because I've been working around this issue with customers for a year, and seen the responses to their support ticket.

This problem equally applies to people wanting to migrate to Movable Type, WordPress or any other platform.

Sam Rubel, People Magazine, and other customers I've worked with have felt trapped on TypePad. Although I've a number of tools in various states of development, an external software client solution isn't a satisfactory solution to most of your customers or ours -- it is just too complex.

Thank you,
Lloyd

[dalas v]

I guess when you get too old to argue about whose Paladin can defeat an Orc faster, this is what happens.

[Mary]

Ummm, sorry but MT, here's some raspberries from me, a former long time MT user for your bad case of sour grapes.

Long before I gave up completely on MT, you all had abandoned your users. We were great when you felt you needed us.. but when you felt you no longer did, you treated us like waste paper. Formerly loyal users, including those who, based on that loyalty had pitched in to help were speaking out about their frustration.. but you didn't care.

I certainly couldn't get help when I ran into problems with the program.

I’m so glad my friends (all former MT users as well) kept urging me to switch to WP. It’s been a dream to use, and I believe that is a result of the community that Automattic have created, by a great program, and bending over backwards to help and actually empower users.

I now have a blog that I am proud of, it is reliable and I know that I can get help when and if I need it..

So, in all honesty, I feel the need to remind MT that instead of slagging off WP, they should start taking stock of their own failures and mistakes, resolve whatever problems you have with your program and deal with it. Whatever problems you're having, are of your own making.

[Mike Papageorge]

Competing? I suppose so, on a marketing level. But talk is cheap. People seem to be finding it hard to swallow that the "competition" couldn't have just stayed with the platforms themselves and not the PR.

[ruigato]

Competition is good for bloggers, both wordpress and MT profit with this.

Cheers from Portugal

[Lefty]

After watching you folks at Six Apart completely destroy Livejournal as a community and then sell off the wreckage, it's pretty funny to see all this talk about your adeptness with "powerful social networking platforms".

[Seth]

QQ more, MT folks. Switched to WP a while back and I would *never* go back to MT.

[Michael Sippey]

@seth, @mary-- we're sorry to lose you! we'd love for you to take another look at MT, we've been hearing from a lot of WP users that they like what they see and are willing to give us another shot.

@lloyd -- i'll echo what anil posted in his comments on the movabletype.com thread, which is that we think the best way for blog services to support import / export is via atom (which is an IETF standard) and the atom publishing protocol. the great news is that we're not alone -- check out the latest news from redmond about their standards-based approach to a similar problem: "The unified on-the-wire format is Atom, with the unified protocol being AtomPub across all of the above storage products and services." http://tinyurl.com/33wsz3

[kevinjohn Gallagher]

If i'm honest, i dont care about OpenSource, or anyone's feelings or really having any real loyalty to a "brand", especially when it's blogging platform.

I have used, and continue to use, both sets of software, and it does sadden me to see this form of bickering. I have to point out something to you Michael that you might not like to hear. Given that Six Apart are a large money making company hiring at least 75 employees currently and who's just made a killing on the sale of LiveJournal, there is no way this is going to look anything but a David and Goliath situation.

"I don't call our post desperate or dirty -- I call it competing."

One question i have to ask though, when does the person playing dirty ever call it anything but competing? I've never heard anyone outside of 'professional wrestling' admit to playing dirty, they all call it competing.

Remember, it's very easy to talk big about your OpenSource product while your salary is being paid by other services.

My personal experience of MT (specifically MT3) was so very very horrific. I'm sure many had the same i'm sure many had different. I can only talk for myself. I've also had some iffy experiences with WordPress, but nothing comparable.

I have found the support here to be shocking. I've had at least 2 refunds from my official Typepad account over what's passed for service - but i thats a different story. I've also found the community that you mentioned and linked to to be less than welcoming to new people. I'm sure many in the MT community will be upset by that, and to those that do help i'm sorry, but my experience and that of my colleagues and friends has been quite pityful. The WordPress community on the other hand is insanely friendly and patient with completely new people. My partner can vouch for this as she is a complete technophobe and is now a happy blogger - all done without my knowledge or help. I am of course sure it could be argued that everyone i know has just been unlucky with the people/timing at MT and just been lucky at Wordpress - and maybe thats true ofcourse - but after a while it's hard to believe that it's all down to luck.

It actually saddens me to write that, because i want MT to succeed. I want it to have a great community, and to thrive. Competition makes for competitive market places and that can only help us the consumer. What really doesn't help is when one company starts slinging mud around.

With Wordpress upgrading to 2.5 soon, i've been following the roadmap and blogs for 2 months to make sure my blogs are ready. In that time, and before this incident, i'd never heard a bad word about MT. Infact, as i pointed out to people, MT is name checked in a positive way on teh wordpress about page. Surely thats the way to go? To state all the good things about your own software rather than making disparaging remarks about other people's?

To me, it seems like the best philosophy, especially if you want to convince people that your product has moved on from the MT3 shambles or the LiveJournal farce.

[Owen]

Much as it is fun to see you all 'not' snarking at one another, I can tell you that both WP and MT have pretty crummy support and policies to make things easier for newbies.

I tell every single person (a few hundred now) that is new to blogging that they should get their feet wet in blogger. It is easier (yes - it is - argue and pretend all you want - it is easier). It is cheaper than some (free vs free vs paid) and it actually has a great deal more flexibility than you lot would pretend.

Once they really get into it then I talk to them about MT and WP - and mostly I recommend WP - because it is easier to get started. Things like if you can survive a Digg don't matter to most. I do NOT want Digg traffic - ever - they aren't my audience.

I would love for you both to succeed - but there is a long way to go and rather than adding 'features' like Open ID support - how about making themes that you can modify WITHOUT learning CSS and HTML - another area where blogger is ahead.

[Spencer Lavery]

Yes, you're "competing" because you still treat MT like a business, not a community. This is why you sank, and this is why WordPress will continue to swim.

Automattic could retire tomorrow and WP will still go strong through the support of its community, whereas even those lured back to MT with the OS move haven't truly forgiven you, nor do they trust you yet, but most of all, most have lost faith in a project that once held a place in their heart and probably wouldn't really notice if MT did die.

Stop competing, start creating.

[Lloyd Budd]

Michael you wrote "which is that we think the best way for blog services to support import / export is via atom (which is an IETF standard) and the atom publishing protocol."

Neither your nor Anil's answers help people. I don't think WordPress or MovableType customers care what format you use -- ATOM would be great -- but we will adopt to whatever format you provide, as long as you provide a way in TypePad to actually export all of one's content.

[Michael Sippey]

@lloyd -- We constantly work to improve our API and portability support in all of our products, making sure that we have support for industry standard APIs like Atom that enable users to get at all of the content in their blogs. And as we do more, we'll blog about it! Additionally, the MT export format does have all the information you should need to recreate a blog on WP -- author info, post data, comments, TrackBacks. But as we continue to say, the future for this stuff is Atom, and we'd love to see all of the platform providers commit to support for it.

@spencer -- Creating is competing! Just look at the great things that are happening with MT and TypePad around community features, Action Streams, Fire Eagle support, mobile features, etc.

@kevinjohn -- Agree with you that the license you choose to distribute your software under really isn't the point at all. The point is providing a great experience for the customer. I'm sorry that you've had a bad experience with us on MT3 -- that's why we've invested so heavily in MT4, and why we're working with the community on making it greater. And we're doing the same thing with TypePad, and as we've stated on everything.typepad.com, you should expect big things from us this year on the service.

[Network Geek]

I followed those links you had regarding the "long history" of Matt "name checking" Movable Type and SixApart. Is six months really "long history"? Because two of those links are from the past three months and one goes back to June of last year.

Also, in the post you linked to regarding the "sharecropping" comment, I read this "To clarify, I have no problem that they’re using Typepad, but for goodness sake put it on your own domain." And, it's not the first time I've read the term "sharecropping" in association with producing content, for free, on other people's websites, or that others use to their advantage.
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/12/sharecropping_t.php
http://www.puregin.org/adsense-is-the-sharecropping-of-the-internet

My background is IT, but my formal education is in Marketing. Yes, comparison advertising is very common, especially for someone in the number two spot. The two clearest examples I can think of off the top of my head are Pepsi vs. Coke and McDonald's vs. Burger King vs. Wendy's. Though, I'd note that in the second example, as I recall, Wendy's never actually names a particular competitor. They only say in their ads that their competitors don't do what they do.
However, the danger in comparison advertising is, and has always been, in accidentally creating ill-will and over-exposing the competitor's product.
http://www.answers.com/topic/comparison-advertising?cat=biz-fin

So, in short, every time SixApart compares their product to WordPress, they are in essence acknowledges that they're number two.

Personally, I hope a kid in his basement in Poughkeepsie is programming something better than both. Because *that* would be real competition.

[Dinah]

Okay, enough of this. I'm posting this comment here too so that it's clear I'm not cutting one group slack & not the other.

I remain stunned by the amount of energy people with very similar overall goals spend in-fighting with those most like them.

Is WordPress/Movable Type bashing back & forth really the best use of either community's time? Really? That's best for your goals?

Every time this crap flares up again, raw egos at the ready to be bruised, it puts me off both communities (and yes, users of a vended product are a community; you don't have to code to participate).

Take this damn complaining energy and go do something productive with it! Help people and organizations who aren't online telling their stories get online. Improve documentation so beginners have a better chance of participating. Fix bugs.

Create something ELSE in the world for people to associate with your product than "oh those guys that spend all their time fighting with those other guys?"

Gah.

[Michael Sippey]

@networkgeek -- The history of name checking goes back farther than that. And even if Nick Carr has used the term "sharecropping," I would still argue that it's probably not the most appropriate term.

@dinah -- I hear ya! Only taking a break to blog from working on requirements and design for features we're bringing to the products. :)

[Lloyd Budd]

@michael you wrote "Additionally, the MT export format does have all the information you should need to recreate a blog on WP -- author info, post data, comments, TrackBacks."

Are you serious?! Work with customers much? If you can't maintain their permalinks, you can't move them. Period. End of story.

Bye bye Google Juice.

Currently, I have to work around this, and although I could have refined and shared my solutions for WordPress rather quickly, that is doing it from the wrong end, and doesn't address the fundamental issue of giving people choice. That is why I haven't. This is something YOU have to fix in TypePad.

Your customers being able to get their content out, all of their content, is the most fundamental requirement of providing a web service, and on the web the URL is an important part of the content. "Cool URIs don't change" http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI

[Michael Sippey]

Lloyd -- thanks for the clarification. Definitely agree that portability is a very important requirement. which is one of the reasons we invested so much in the Atom standard. We'd love to see everyone use the same set of tools for portability -- and it's pretty clear that the Google / Blogger folks are headed that way as well.

[Jman]

Wow. I love WP but learned long ago that Mullenweg is a douche. But you two out-douched the douche. Bravo.

[Pat in Michigan]

you all sold your community up the river, when you all decided to start charging for typepad.

idots.

WP spanks your a$$. just admit it and move on.