May 19, 2004

The Great Blogtercation of 2004 : Or How The Blogosphere Exploded with MT3
by Liza Sabater

Part 2 of 3

I worked at Colgate-Palmolive for four years as the "Technical Writer" for the Consumer Affairs department. I literally wrote the "book" (actually, intranet reference manual) on how to respond to consumer complaints and praises. All "communications" were divided into 5 major categories : Personal Injury, Property Damage, Promotions, Praise and Inquiries. Each category was further subdivided.

All this data was culled on a daily, weekly, monthly, quaterly and yearly basis. Reports were made constantly. The purpose of all of this was to try to see trends in use and consumer valuation of a product. The rule of thumb at CP is that for every person that contacted the company as many as 100 people would be know about how the company's handled the matter by word of mouth. 100 for each person. Not six degrees of separation but 100. These people were considered "influencers" and greatly valued. Especially if they were a 20/30 year old woman with school age children.

No phone call, email or letter was ever taken lightly. In effect, Reuben Mark, the CEO of Colgate-Palmolive fought against outsourcing the CA department. In his mind, this was more than just a bunch of people dealing with irate consumers. The CA was the heart and soul of the marketing and sells department and the incubator of ideas for R&D. The US division of the Consumer Affairs department is directly under his office. The International division is right across. Consumer Affairs is serious business at Colgate-Palmolive.

Since the years I've been gone, I've seen huge leaps and bounds in brand extension for Colgate products. My contribution to that trend was the reference manual. At the CA representatives' tips there is a wealth of information that allows them to deal with callers through actual conversations. Big no-no at the time were scripted responses. They really wanted consumers to get that CA Reps were there to listen to what they had to say, to really engage them in conversation because what they had to say is valued by the company. So, in that spirit, I wrote more than two thousand (yes, that's right, 2000+) hypertext screens (this was 1994 and the program I used ran in DOS!) dealing with every topic imaginable : PETA, FDA regulations, tartar, halitosis, floor refinishing, best spot removers, allergies, basics of physiology, Alzheimer's, triclosan, et cetera et cetera. Plus, I had to write how to use the system and maintain it and then train the representatives on so that they could train other people once I was gone. The reference manual was not to be a static document. It was intended to grow with the needs of the company and the changing trends among consumers.

This is why I spent the whole weekend reading through the trackbacks at SixApart. It's the CA writer and researcher in me. There is so much to learn from them. I would have to say that, given this information is on the web, for every "consumer response trackback", 6A should expect influencers to have an impact with word-of-mouth by a factor of 500. The titles sum up the issues brought throughout those trackback links. The excerpts are the best of the bunch for each category.

It's the licensing... : Power Users are opposed to being limited to less than what the free version gives now

kottke.org :: home of fine hypertext products
The tiered personal pricing still doesn't make sense .Mena writes :
Our best explanation for the tiering is that we feel a personal user who sets up weblogs for 50 of his friends should pay more for a license than one who uses only one weblog for himself.

Someone hosting 50 people should pay more, but that should be handled as a non-personal situation on a case-by-case basis. What I feel is happening instead is that 6A is offloading a business problem of theirs that concerns only a small portion of their user base (i.e. the folks hosting 50 friends on one install) to all of their customers. Because of a few potential offenders, customers have to deal with pricing tiers, definitions of weblogs and users, keeping track of how many active weblogs and users they have, upgrading their licenses when they add authors or weblogs, etc. We shouldn't have to do that. I don't want to get out my credit card every time I want to add a guest author to my weblog. Do I get a refund if I purchase a 13 weblog/13 author license but 10 of those authors and 7 of those weblogs are inactive after 90 days?**

The solution is to make it as straightforward as possible for customers. In addition to the free version (1 author, 3 weblogs), offer the Personal Edition for $70-$100 for unlimited weblogs and authors with the condition that too many (10? 20?) "weblogs for friends" will be considered non-personal use of the software and will be subject to extra fees. That way, the customer's ownership of the product is vastly simplified and the burden of dealing with the non-personal use of the Personal Edition shifts back to 6A where it belongs.

pixelkitty.net - all talk, no walk.
I can deal with the no support and no commercial usage - that is completely fair, but limiting me to ONE AUTHOR and THREE WEBLOGS? WTF?!?!?

This is a tremendous step backwards from the gang at SixApart. They may have released a new version, but they have stripped any usefullness of the free version.

They say this free version is "fully functional" but I dissagree. Fully functional would allow me to have more than one author on my personal website, like the free Blogger does. Fully functional would mean if I wanted to have a seperate weblog for my photos, my words and my technical titbits, I could. But I can't.

I have no problem with SixApart charging for commercial licences - but $70 USD is Around $130 AUS - for a very limited amount of authors and weblogs.

Starting April 16, 2004
Licensing, pricing, availability of modifiable source, etc., are all part of the "feature-set" we look at when evaluating products. The thing to learn here is that the choice of how you differentiate between users for pricing is a key element in a product's feature-set. You had better be pretty clear about the philosophy behind that differentiation and change it at your peril. Users take advantage of the complete feature-set, including licensing terms, when they use a product. If multiple authors are free, then users create them to solve a myriad of problems. If multiple weblogs are free, they use that ability to make up for deficiencies elsewhere. If you change that, they feel betrayed as much as if you removed a key feature.

Burningbird >> Never Kick a Sleeping Giant
In addition, there are still a lot of unanswered questions about the benefits of the paid versus free upgrades. I notice that the order page still lists the following for the paid version, but not the free:

# Application updates and fixes (not including major upgrades)
# A guaranteed path to future versions
# Access to fee-based services such as installation, advanced support, other services

The implication here still is that MT 3.0 is the last free version. There's also that restriction requiring MT upgraders to sign up for TypeKey to download the product, when we were assured that TypeKey would not be required for MT. This is a complete reversal from an earlier Six Apart communication. Why a MT upgrader must have TypeKey makes no sense.

Building things: But what about meeeeee?
Even MT's sister, TypePad, offers the unfettered Pro account, where you're limited on the hosting side -- the disk space and bandwidth -- but not by what you may do with it, the number of blogs you can create. (I realize it's an imperfect comparison since they're somewhat different products, TP Pro also gives you unlimited authors, and you pay monthly for TP, but I think it holds nonetheless; once you've made your payment, you are unrestricted in what you can do with the application.)

I'd really like to know the reasoning behind this deviation.

DrunkenBlog: Of Caveats & Clauses
You see, SixApart for the most part got away with their license out of trust. People trusted them not to do something really nasty, or stupid, unclassy or lame. Some still do, and to be honest they may not abuse it in the future. But now, to a lot of people, that trust is gone. Oh, there good feelings for a lover scorned... but once cheated on, unless you're really codependent, everything changes.

People can picture them cashing out in the future, with the company being sold and all bets are off. They know the single-CPU restriction was considered, even if it was a mistake, and realize just how much SixApart could screw with them or their business at a whim. They realize that SixApart could have retroactively told them to pay up for what they're using now, and that could happen in the future. They're trusted not to do that, but as I said, the seed of doubt is already there and someone would be a fool not to be examining alternatives. The incentive wasn't there before, because of the trust... it is now.

bwana.org
movabletype, if you're reading, you never remove functionality from software when introducing a new pricing scheme. what you should do is give the "pay" version, more features. you don't charge $70 for a backend code rewrite and typekey functionality. sorry. goodbye.

Do the Math, get a headache

Derek (Derek's Rantings and Musings) at The Sky is Not Falling (Jeremy Zawodny's blog)
It's not an "entitlement" attitude, it's simply a (for me anyway) "this is priced outside the realm of what i am willing to pay" situation.

For me to have the flexibility I have now, in creating blogs for friends on the fly with a couple clicks of the mouse, etc., requires paying a craptastic amount of money (especially since I don't actually *see* any of that added value).

The "base price" to support my current existing users, 17 authors over seven or eight blogs, would be $189.95 for the first 13 authors, and $39.80 for an additional 4 authors, totalling $229.75.

Sorry, for someone who does this "just to put their words up on the web" and isn't making money off it, that's just way far from being "even" on the cost/value ratio - to me anyway.

At that cost/value ratio, I'm much better off spending $230.00 worth of my time installing different software with no artificial limitations, and then not having to worry about ponying up $9.95 because a fifth friend wants me to click three URLs and add them a blog (a transaction, I might add, which incurs *no* additional resources from SixApart to do).

So Very Posh - Blog - Six Apart Tries to Fix Their Mistake
If they're still considered separate, it puts me at 7 weblogs and I would need to buy $20 worth of additional licenses for the extra stuff, plus another $10 every time I want to start something new. What happens when I want to start something new, pay my $10 and then after a few months, I can't stand the thought of that new venture and get rid of it? I doubt I'll get a refund on my $10. Will I be able to sell that $10 license to someone else wanting an extra weblog/author?

Stupid Evil Bastard: Should I stay or should I go? SA speaks up on MT licensing issues.
On another blog Anil Dash asked what it would take to make the licenses work right. Here's what it would take from me:

Ideally the price for personal licenses should come down considerably. Using the $9.95 per blog/author rule they set up I'd say that the price for the base 5/5 personal license shouldn't be any higher than $50 . That's still $5 more expensive than pMachine Pro which is unrestricted so if it were me I'd take it even lower, but it's still better than the $70 price they're asking now. Admittedly, this still wouldn't convince me to buy MT3 over pMachine as they currently stand, but if the general release has decent goodies to go with it then this price level would be a lot more palatable. At the very least the intro price should become the standard price. $100 is going to be a big barrier for a lot of people. They may start with the free version and as soon as they hit a limit they'll jump ship.

What am I paying for?

Comments at Wizbang: Upgrade Hell
Kevin,

I installed MT 3.0D and it was a holy living nightmare. I was up until after midnight (on a work day) and finally got it done.

They didn't have any FAQs or knowledge base support for the upgrade! They just had a page that said it would be available in a few days.

My question was "Why didn't they wait until they had troubleshooting instructions BEFORE they made the upgrade available for download.

Bad, bad marketing decisions on the part of Six Apart. It seems like everyone is jumping ship.

There are some really bad bugs in this release, too. The index page doesn't show new comments posted and the comments form directs users to the main index instead of the comments listing page. I can't figure out how to fix it -- again, no instructions. This is obviously a beta release that was wrongly released to the public as a dev version.

I like being able to delete comments and trackbacks from a single page. But, that's really the only UI improvement.

Since I upgraded, I've experimented with the TypeKey registration. No one will use it. The number of comments is down on my blog about 90%! I can't have that.

The rebuilds seem much faster, though. I have about 500 entries and it only takes a couple of minutes. It used to take an eternity.

Stupid Evil Bastard: Should I stay or should I go? SA speaks up on MT licensing issues.
For me to even consider staying at the current pricing I would have to told right now what I should expect in the way of new goodies come the general release. I want a list that says: "In addition to whatever cool stuff comes out of the contest, we plan to introduce the following plugins at the time of general release..." That list would have to include the following:

The File Manager functionality from TypePad. MT needs this badly and it's one of the things I've been looking for in other packages for a long time now. Pivot has something like it already and it doesn't even use a mySQL database.

The Insert Image/File functionality from TypePad. Again, this is something that MT has needed for a very long time.

Category Hierarchy as promised for MT Pro. David Raynes is already beta testing a 3.0 compatible version of his SubCategories plugin so this is one requirement that's being met.

Improved Notifications as promised for MT Pro. No idea what the actual plans were for that, but what MT has now definitely needs improvement. Chad Everett is looking at what it would take to port MT-Notifier to 3.0 and that would make me happy to a degree, but that should be one aspect of a much improved notification system for MT. In my mind both Chad and David should be contracted by Six Apart to develop those two plugins in agreement to make them part of the core of MT like they did with Jay Allen's search hack. I don't think either of these two fine gentlemen would object to that.

Photo Album Integration as promised for MT Pro. Whether it's the same as what's in TypePad is really up to them, but SOMETHING would be nice as my wife keeps bugging me about it.

TypeLists like at TypePad would be icing on the cake. This one isn't something I'd HAVE to have to consider sticking with MT, but its inclusion certainly would be an added bonus.

If I were told that these things would be in the general release I'd be much more likely to sign on now at the intro pricing. Additional things that would be icing on the cake, but not essential would include:

Threaded comments. I really want threaded comments.

A better user registration system of some sort that would allow regular visitors to track everything that's new since the last time they visited. Entries, comments, whatever.

An event calendar would be lovely.

Polls would be nice too.

Without knowing that this stuff lies in wait for the general release I'm left to compare MT3 with everything else on the market at this time and even if I ignore the free and open source projects, MT3 doesn't stack up well against the other pay-for-play offerings for the simple reason that they offer one thing that MT3 doesn't and that's the lack of restrictions on blogs/authors. Right, wrong, or otherwise that's something that is a big consideration for a lot of us.

A new business model NEEDS a new way of doing business

Teal Sunglasses: more on Movable Type 3.0...
Ultimately, Six Apart doesn't seem to understand it's product very well, doesn't seem to understand how its users use it's product, and built a company that doesn't seem to understand how to use its own tools to make itself a better and pro-active company.

And because of that, I find I no longer have confidence in the product -- because the company behind it seems to have lost touch with the environment it's selling its product into. Which is, ultimately, why I'm swapping platforms.

padawan.info: Movable Type 3.0 Developer Edition, much ado about nothing?
Never raise your customers expectations if you are not going to deliver soon (aka: under-promise, over-deliver.) This lesson I’ve learned at Apple when Jobs came back and stopped the bad habit of the company to pre-announce products a long, long time in advance, disappointing everyone and their dog who then had plenty of time to fantasize over a dream in their head that would never match what was eventually delivered (if delivered at all). Six Apart should not have raised our expectations with two things: the promise that MT would remain both free and on pair with TypePad, and Movable Type Pro (which I feel entitled to call a vaporware for now).

Don't copy/paste broken business models. The license published on May 13 did contain a restriction that MT should be used solely on a mono-processor server (note: the revision done on the 15th has removed this restriction.) As a business buyer, I've always been reluctant to such restrictions, which are more typical of high-end databases than weblog software. I do not accept to pay for variables that are purely linked to my own performance (e.g. optimization of server resources) but I'm definitely willing to pay for concrete work done by a supplier (a license and maintenance fee for software development and upgrades, a support fee for support, etc.) the only variable that I can accept to be based purely on my sole performance is called a bonus pay!

Don't mix all your audiences together. This one is tricky, precisely because of the weblog-centric nature of Six Apart. I don't think that they are bad at communicating with their users, as some have written here or there, but that their weblog makes it difficult to address different audiences specifically. IMHO, all their sites could benefit from a little information re-architecture to paint the picture distinctly to the individuals, the developers, the business users, this might be a little controversial, but I'm on both sides and I can see that L'Internationale de la blogosphere is not ready to fly yet, i.e. you don't sell the same concepts and dreams in the same terms to "free lunch Joe Blogger" and to the BBC's CIO. Or may be I'm completely wrong, may be the CIOs are more mature and that's those individual bloggers who aren't getting it ;-).

Granularity is important. The price list has figures with two to four digits (including the one that some corporate users got to see). Six Apart chose to index the price on two variables: the number of authors and the number of weblogs. I think the present model is not granular enough, too steep for individuals (I'm already using four weblogs and two authors to run this web site because of MT's present limitations!) and lacking clarity and flexibility for the high end corporate user. It could benefit from being clearly split in three: a limited but free version for individual/personal use, a flat-fee unlimited version under $70 for the personal use of power-users (like Jason Kottke suggests ) and a granular price list for business users that should do a better job at explaining the options, notably in terms of support.

gingerandjohn.com: MT 3.0, cost, price, and goodwillBefore I get off this horribly long-winded soapbox, I have to take issue with the "ya gotta eat!" crowd. I'm a developer myself. If I want to keep doing it for a living, I have to figure out how to get paid. But let me offer up a few examples from my Quick Launch toolbar of free software (in the speech and beer senses), and their proprietary alternatives:

*Mozilla Firefox , web browser (IE6)
*Mozilla Thunderbird , mail client (Outlook/Outlook Express)
*SciTE , text editing (Notepad, EditPad, TextPad, a host of others)
*Python , scripting and general RAD (VBScript, VB, Delphi)
*Gimp , image editing (Photoshop)
*Eclipse , Java/PHP/C++/Python/XML IDE (Visual Studio.NET, JBuilder, others)
*Filezilla ,FTP client (WS_FTP, CuteFTP, others)

Moving over to my task bar, I've got:
*Gaim , IM client (AIM, Yahoo IM, MSN )
*Apache , web server (IIS)
*MySQL , database server (Access, SQL Server, Oracle)

And that doesn't even count PHP (ASP), CVS (Visual Source Safe), and Bugzilla (Rational); tools that I use every day as a developer . I get paid as a developer for being highly productive; these are the tools that help me get there. The cost of the proprietary alternative used to be acceptable until the price became too high. I learned my lesson about software development tools, and now I've learned it about my web log tool too.

mamamusings: market research mistakes
Who was it that thought that surveying 2500 random users of MT would be the best way to gauge user reaction?

[...]

The fact that the response to the new licenses surprised them so much says volumes about how little they understood their users. And what’s astonishing about that to me is that in this industry, there’s really no excuse for not having ongoing conversations with your market, about all aspects of your product or service. There should be no big surprises in a weblog-enabled company.

CM Harrington's comments on cloudy, chance of sun breaks: the folks at WordPress must be delighted via Alan's Ramblings: MovableTripe
6A needs to get paid. I don't think anyone disputes that. People also need to realise that 6A is no longer "Ben and Mena". It's a full-fledged VC funded company with offices around the world.

When 6A became VC funded, a very radical change occurred. The VC, because they are the ones fronting the money, are the ones calling the shots. Don't be fooled by Mena's posts. TypeKey, TypePad, the MT3 Licensing, and the lack of communication are all influenced by the VC. That's just what happens when you become funded. That is the entire point. Other people give you huge chunks of money so they can make more money.

6A probably signed a deal that told the VC that they will get X% return on investment in T time (where X is large, and T is small). How do you do that? Usually it involves doing things you wouldn't normally do to customers or a community you are a part of. The licensing scheme is the obvious result. If they didn't do this, the VC people would probably be able to sell the whole shebang to a large company and sack Mena and Ben without batting an eyelash.

I've done the VC thing several times. It's all the same. If VC didn't want a return on their investment, they would call it a hand out.

Long story; short pier: Mollified, and yet.
... I were just coming into this blogging game, and had heard MT was the hella best, and went to get the program, I could download the Developer’s Release, or I could�

What?

TypePad , probably. �Not to climb to far out on a limb, but in the absence of clear communications, theory will fester: I think they’re trying to haul their income from one stream bed into another, roomier one with raw muscle power. Little blogs like mine ought to end up on TypePad; power users and “enterprise� folks can beef up the bottom line; de facto resellers like the fine folks over at White Rose can pay up or fall by the wayside. And this is SixApart’s prerogative. (Given the “oh you whining free-software hippies, it’s only 60 bucks for a cab ride , why don’t you just suck it up, you ungrateful internet freeloaders� rhetoric that’s spewing from some quarters, one feels it’s de rigueur to include a standard disclaimer with every post on the subject: “ In our wondrous capitalist economy, a software company may charge whatever it bloody well feels like for its proprietary product ,� or words to that effect. Also: Saddam is evil; the killing of Nick Berg was deplorable; and courage! Bush is a noodle.) But hauling rather than weaning an income stream from here to there is by its nature disruptive, and Jesus, I’m about to descend into punditry.

molly.com
While many people remain upset, suspicious, or unfulfilled by the compromises , I applaud Six Apart for responding honestly and openly to the public response. Many people advocated their original position , still, it must have been pretty awful to be on the wrong end of such profound backlash. Six Apart could have said nothing, let the ragers rage on until they tired themselves out, and stuck to their original plan. But they have retained an open dialog and have responded very quickly with a compromise . The desire to remain communicative and community-oriented appears to be very much alive at Six Apart, and that's reassuring.

scriptygoddess
They really put the screws in on their userbase. They've been so secretive about everything (which is really ironic when you think about it - I mean we're talking about BLOG software - software that is used to COMMUNICATE to the PUBLIC - yet they didn't) - and if they had asked their USERBASE what THEY wanted - they probably would have seen this coming.

I'm thinking that maybe they're now strictly going for COMMERCIAL end-users - and see TypePad as the option for users like me. Unfortunately, I like hosting stuff on my own servers. I like tinkering with the blog engine and hacking it to do all kinds of funky stuff. So TypePad is out.

Starting April 16, 2004
The history of the product up until this point is interesting with respect to learning about business models. They built up their "franchise" and got the company going with a good product, modifiable (for your own purposes) source, a large part of the audience who could legally get it for free, donations, for-pay services (installation), and reasonable commercial licensing.

The new licenses at first looked to many current users like a change in the business model, away from the "large part...for free" and not just a beefing up of the services/commercial part.

Posted by Liza Sabater in Activism, Blogs, Commerce, Copyright, Culture, Open Source, Technology
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