SixApart finally gets some balls
If any of you have ever met Benn or aMena Trott you’ll know them to be very nice people. And I bet none of you ever met Barak Berkowitz the former CEO of 6A.
Despite their leadership, cutting edge tech and contributions to the open web (which I tried like hell to get them to brag about and particpate more in) the 6A of old was a quiet company. They just focused on selling blogging systems to enterprise - and showing up at a few Loic events in Paris.
And when Microsoft announced support for OpenID -6A was not even mentiond in the press release and THEY (Brad Fitzpatrick of LiveJournal purchased by 6A) invented it!
So imagine my surprise and glee when I read this recent post by Anil Dash - of SixApart - attacking Wordpress 25 head on - claiming that Moveable Type was better. This was all timed to happen during SXSW - BTW.
The best part is that Anil is using his companies support for OpenID, oAuth, Atom, activity streams and other cutting edge technologies as the differentiating factor. Its as if Chris Alden - the new CEO of SixApart - finally said “enough is enough, let come out swinging and BRAG abut who we are and what we do!”
SixAprt is ahihgly respected old guard Web 2.0 company - but so is Automattic - Matt Mullenweg’s company - which supports the open source Wordpress platform. Davis Recordon (of SixApart) has been out - traveling the world - helping with the OpenID movement and Mena has been off on pregnancy leave. So now we’re seeing two old friends - duke it out!
Now I’m not here to say that Wordpress 2.5 is any worse or better than Moveable Type - but I sure wish Wordpress had a better media gallery in it - and better management of plugins, themes and widgets. I use Wordpress for this blog.
And its sure fun to watch mild old-ass SixApart wake up.
March 11th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Marc, thanks for the kind words and for the perspective that only you could provide.
You’ve articulated the vision that Chris (and all of us) really share — that inventing things that make the web better *is* important, and it *is* a value we’ve always held.
I always regret that some of these things turn into a pissing match, given the nature of some parts of the blogosphere, and that’s why I worked very hard to write something that wasn’t about people or personalities, but about what we want from the web. And that core idea that good, healthy competition and innovation is worth celebrating is something that we’ve kind of (re-)discovered our confidence in; Thanks for being an invaluable influence in that.
March 12th, 2008 at 2:23 am
Moveable Type, not Moveable Type. Please, correct