Jeffrey McManus

I promised myself I wouldn’t write weblogs about weblogs and I would try not to refer to other peoples’ weblogs so much, but here goes.

Robert Scoble wrote an essay over the weekend titled “Why Microsoft Won’t Beat Six Apart.” It’s full of interesting and canny observations from the viewpoint of an evangelist (Scoble is an evangelist for Microsoft; evangelism is what they tell me I do for eBay as well).

Six Apart is the company that produces the Movable Type weblogging software and the Typepad hosted service (if you’re reading this, you’re soaking in it). Scoble’s theory is that Six Apart is good at catering to opinion leaders (who Robert refers to as “connectors”) and Microsoft isn’t, so Six Apart will win if they go head-to-head against Microsoft in the personal content management space. I’m not too sure about this, though. You could argue that only opinion leaders have weblogs in the first place. It’s also dangerous to assume that when any technology company “wins” in a particular space, it has won for all time. (Case in point: Microsoft lost the “browser wars,” then won it, and is now losing it again.) This attitude is one of the things that is at the heart of the Innovator’s Dilemma, a dilemma that Microsoft (and the company that I work for) are profoundly affected by.

I was slow to come around to the notion of the fabulousness of weblogging and I’m still getting my head wrapped around it. But it’s definitely rekindled my love affair with the Internet, and I say that with 100% sincerity. At the same time, I don’t think we’ve seen more than a tiny fraction of the potential of the interactive, content-driven Web, which means that companies (maybe Microsoft, maybe somebody else) have room to innovate in this area. The innovator who makes easy for someone’s grandmother to have a Weblog could stand to make a killing in the emerging personal content management market. Six Apart doesn’t seem to have peoples’ grandmothers in mind today, but Microsoft might.

I must say, though, the thing I really love about Six Apart, besides their kickass software, is how fast they respond to support requests. On weekdays I usually get an answer (the right answer) within an hour or two. That’s more than I expected when I signed up, and I’m delighted that they’ve exceeded all my expectations.

Related posts:

1. Come Work for Me, Mini Microsoft
2. Microsoft to Offer Software To Make Game Creation Easier
3. Microsoft and VCs