Everyone else is saying it, so I’m sure you’ve heard already. Six Apart, creators of Movable Type, have announced a new service called TypePad that will be released later this year.
The best way to describe the product they intend to offer is this: it will harness the power of Movable Type into a system as easy to use as LiveJournal and all the gizmos and gadgets that bloggers have been tacking on to their sites for years like server stats, referrer tracking, and blog rolls. No installation will be required, and no hosting company will need to be afforded. All of this is included in the package, which, if you couldn’t tell, won’t be free.
While I don’t fault LiveJournal for not getting to this point yet (because where they choose to take their product is their choice), this is how I envisioned it to be 3 years ago when I had root access to all of the servers and was playing a fairly active role in its development. When I began realizing that LiveJournal wasn’t headed in the direction that I envisioned, or, wasn’t headed there fast enough, I started to consider doing it myself. I began coding Inklog with the hopes of creating a product that I would be able to offer to the community and provide specialized, centralized versions of for a price.
In just 18 short months, MovableType (regardless of the bad things I say about it) has revolutionized the blogging world. The features it offers are unparalleled and almost every blogging application built after it has used it as a template for what works.
In a way, it makes me sad to see this happen. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for Ben and Mena. They’ve done an amazing thing for the blogging community and have increased the usability and the content value of the Internet as a whole with their product. What makes me sad is that, it could have just as easily been me. While their software is certainly unique in its operation, it isn’t anything that I couldn’t have created. The difference, is that they did and I didn’t.
I still think that, with a better template system, categories, and customizable single entry pages, LiveJournal would beat MovableType hands down in ease of use. With the addition of referrer tracking, image hosting, site statistics, and trackback, it would even beat what I envision TypePad will be. Especially considering their new URL structure, the recently added RSS 2.0 feeds, and the News Aggregator functionality it provides.
In a lot of ways I wish that Brad Fitzpatrick and I hadn’t had differing visions, because I know that, with a partner, I’m much more motivated to get things done. Perhaps that’s how Ben and Mena have done it so quickly.
In the end, if you want to be successful, the quality of the code doesn’t matter. It’s the functionality it provides, and how long it takes you to build it that does.
I think Andre Torrez (creator of FilePile) said it best:
But I’ll tell you what: ideas are fucking worthless. Anyone could do FilePile. I could write MetaFilter in a day. The only thing special about the code is that it was written. The only thing special about the sites are the users.
Even you can do it.
I’ll keep chugging along with Inklog. Maybe some day, it’ll be where it should have been a year ago. And maybe then, it’ll be worth something. As it is right now, it’s nothing but a collection of bits and bytes that doesn’t do anything for anyone.