Movable Type Barriers to Adoption
Why does Six Apart put barriers in the way to adoption of Movable Type? Even small things like up front click through licensing agreements and requiring people to register to download free binaries are barriers to adoption. Especially when competing with software like WordPress that is easily available.
Sure Six Apart has to weigh the cost of those barriers against marketing and sales benefits like capturing prospect information, but I doubt the math will ever come out in favor of being more restrictive.
Not feeling loved is a barrier to adoption — not a single thing on the Movable Type home page says anything about personal bogging. The welcome mat is out, just not to you — even if you were Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. Getting access to the Movable Type binaries requires just too many steps, reading a license agreement, signing up for TypeKey which you probably don’t want or at least don’t want to waste your time working out what it is and whether you want it… hey sorry I just came here because I wanted to use your blogging software. I’m complaining about small barriers but when you compare small barriers on one side to no barriers on the other side you know what way the water is going to flow…
I don’t believe companies can survive chasing the high-end part of any product sector if the momentum and innovation for that sector naturally comes from the broader market. Sure you can try to be a niche player, but the tendency is you will keep getting squeezed into a smaller and smaller space. This is true in the computer hardware world and I’ll bet it is true in the world of blogging software. Blogging is almost guaranteed that most innovation/leadership is going to come for the grass roots community that is blogging, even if enterprises and businesses have special needs.
At Silicon Graphics we used to talk about developing technology for the high end and having that trickle down to the higher volume products. And while we could always find examples where this had happened many companies proved the reverse is more likely to be true — companies will win longer term if you focus on meeting customer needs for high volume products and work to claw your way up the tree to higher end, lower volume and hopefully higher margin products. And look where Silicon Graphics is now… all trickled down.
The techies and others that have to support blogs at their work are going to want to use what they are familiar with. And often so many great feedback and features recommendations come from loyal individual users. And no, VOX or anything else that Six Apart has, is not an answer. I really suspect Six Apart needs that wider user base, a wider community of loyal users, and they need to be careful to not put even small barriers in the way of adoption.
Hi, I work at Six Apart, and with the MT team, and I agree with almost everything you’ve said here — the barriers to getting started with MT are just too high, still.
However, the one question I had for you was about your statement, “And no, VOX or anything else that Six Apart has, is not an answer.” Are you saying Vox isn’t a good answer for a personal blog? Because I think it’s one of the few cases where a single product in a category is clearly head and shoulders better than everything else out there. Any feedback you can offer there?
Comment by Anil — February 1, 2007 @ 5:05 pm
I should have been clearer. I am talking about non-service based solutions and was not comparing VOX to any other blogging service. For individual blogs the blog service space is clearly important. I was referring to software for people who want to maintain their own blogs. The point I was trying to make about VOX, was having VOX does not excuse (is not an aswer to) Six Apart trying to make Movable Type really easily available.
I’ve sat in many marketing meetings where people would go over adding just one little information collection point, just one more login, just one more “do you want this bundle…”, just one more… users are really finniky, all these little things hurt their experience.
None of this is about features, quality, capabilities, reputation etc. It is just about being careful to not put barriers in the way to adoption.
Comment by darryl — February 1, 2007 @ 5:40 pm