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The Business of the Blogosphere

By Jeralyn, Section Blog Related
Posted on Sun Feb 20, 2005 at 05:06:45 AM EST
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While mainstream media has been paying lots of attention to bloggers this year, it's a welcome change to see it devote headlines to those who made it possible, like Ben and Mena Trott, the darlings of the blogosphere.

Movable Type, the blogging software used by more than 7 million bloggers, (including its simplified version, Typepad,) was created by Ben and Mena Trott in their bedroom. They named their little venture Six Apart, because they were born six days apart. Fast forward to the present, three years after they launched the company, and Six Apart has offices in San Francisco, Paris and Tokyo. Venture capitalist and blogger Joi Ito arranged for them to sell "a stake" in their company for $11.5 million. Mena is President, Ben is CTO, and neither has turned 30 yet.

In January, PC Magazine named the couple "People of the Year." Along the way, they've assembled some incredible talent. Jay Allen, the guru behind MT-Blacklist that protects us blogs from comment spam, left his home and job in Bucharest to migrate to San Francisco and become Project Manager for MT. Brad Choate, who among other accomplishments, created MT-Textile, which allows bloggers to use shorthand while writing instead of html ("bq" for blockquote is my favorite), also joined MT this past year.

Last month, Six Apart purchased Danga International, makers of Live Journal, bringing along its 2 million plus active users and its founder, Brad Fitzpatrick, who is now Six Apart's Chief Architect. This week Six Apart launched a new website that includes MT, Typepad and Live Journal.

To those of us who have been using MT since its early days, when a support request would be answered by Ben or Mena because MT was just Ben and Mena, Six Apart represents not only the biggest success story of the blogoshere, but the best indication that blogging is here to stay.

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    • The Business of the Blogosphere | 8 comments (8 topical)
    Re: The Business of the Blogosphere (none / 0) (#1)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sun Feb 20, 2005 at 12:45:10 AM EST
    Great people.

    Re: The Business of the Blogosphere (none / 0) (#2)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sun Feb 20, 2005 at 05:46:58 AM EST
    I'm not dissing Six Apart, but they were hardly the pioneers of blogging software.

    Re: The Business of the Blogosphere (none / 0) (#3)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sun Feb 20, 2005 at 08:34:57 AM EST
    You know, for what it's worth, admitting they were pioneers is not the same as claiming they were the pioneers.

    Re: The Business of the Blogosphere (none / 0) (#4)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sun Feb 20, 2005 at 09:08:42 AM EST
    From the same article: "Critics, though, view all the fuss about blogs as the latest bout of Internet hyperbole, one that will eventually fade away once readers realize they are rife with inaccuracies and mundane minutiae." So just stop with the inaccuracies and mundane minutiae, will you, TL? ;-)

    Re: The Business of the Blogosphere (none / 0) (#5)
    by Che's Lounge on Sun Feb 20, 2005 at 09:48:33 AM EST
    "Critics, though, view all the fuss about blogs as the latest bout of Internet hyperbole, one that will eventually fade away once readers realize they are rife with inaccuracies and mundane minutiae." Critics being "journalists" who hate being upstaged. F**k them. What's the alternative? American Idol? I'll take minutae and innacuracies (which intelligent people can filter) anyday.

    Re: The Business of the Blogosphere (none / 0) (#6)
    by Che's Lounge on Sun Feb 20, 2005 at 09:51:26 AM EST
    Sorry about the spelling. Too much carne asade and valium last night. But well worth it.

    Re: The Business of the Blogosphere (none / 0) (#7)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sun Feb 20, 2005 at 11:12:07 AM EST
    I like Typepad a lot. I tried Blogger once but it just wasn't as good. But still, I'm really surprised about that 7 million number because I thought that most people were using free stuff and only a tiny percentage of bloggers were using Movable Type or Typepad.

    Re: The Business of the Blogosphere (none / 0) (#8)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sun Feb 20, 2005 at 01:18:23 PM EST
    While Typepad is a little more simple to use than Movable Type, as the article notes, the major difference is the fact that Typepad is a hosted service.

    The Business of the Blogosphere | 8 comments (8 topical)