Disliked – Page 11 – Dan Dickinson: The Primary Vivid Weblog

With the rest of the blog world [angry over the Flickr/Yahoo imbroglio this week](http://strange.corante.com/archives/2007/02/02/bad_flickr_no_donut_for_you.php), I’m going to focus my nerd intensity in a different direction.

I’ve been a loyal Movable Type user since 2002. (For the non-nerds, MovableType is the blog software that powers this site.) I burned cycles beta testing MT 3.0. I bought the unlimited personal license for MT 3.0, before the licensing terms went back to being free. I’ve done proof of concepts on MT at both of the companies I’ve been at since graduating from college.

While new blog software like [WordPress](http://www.wordpress.org/) and [Typo](http://trac.typosphere.org/) came onto the scene with a bang, MT didn’t continue to evolve. But I stayed put. I had faith in Six Apart.

While the energy at 6A was poured into their other products – TypePad, LiveJournal, and Vox – and MT continued to stagnate, I stayed put. I had faith in Six Apart.

When Movable Type got an enterprise version, I perked my eyebrows up. I asked about pricing for work – we’re always curious about expanding into new services. But the pricing, even for education, was absurd. So I stayed put. I had faith in Six Apart.

When the “Movable Type News” page became “[Blogs @ Work](http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/news/index)” and began focusing on all of the case studies and hosting partners that 6A has lined up – and thus, barely meeting the definition of “news about the software” – I stayed put. I still had faith in Six Apart. They were expanding their markets, it made sense…in a way.

When the ProNet mailing list started having monthly conference calls – again, *a mailing list about blog software is having conference calls* – I stayed put. I had faith in Six Apart, that they would shake this absurdity. Isn’t the point of having a mailing list so you can communicate? Isn’t the point of having blog software so you can communicate?

As I had more and more emergency requests for consulting from my friends who use MovableType to power their businesses – things like “why aren’t comments scaling” and “why is my server dying under the load” – I could only shrug. These were the reasons I had to stop non-authenticated comments and trackbacks on this blog. Still, I stayed put. I had faith that so long as I decided not to make any sudden changes in the functionality of my blog, MT would continue to do. It’s not like I’m driving tons of traffic.

I’ve continued to have faith for over four years. For me, to stick with the same piece of software for four years is unusual. Web browsers, text editors, mail clients, feed readers – I’m constantly cycling the apps I use. Four years is a show of resolve, a show of faith.
My faith was broken last week.

As seems to always be the case, the thing that broke my faith wasn’t a personal technology nightmare. It wasn’t my server crashing, it wasn’t a new version that broke my layouts.

It was an email. It was this email, with a subject line of “Movable Type News”:

Since we haven’t sent out a Movable Type newsletter in a while, we wanted to start by sharing the biggest recent news in the Movable Type world: Movable Type Enterprise, an entirely new platform built on the rock-solid MT foundation. After five years of success with Movable Type, Movable Type Enterprise was added to the lineup to help blogs scale gracefully within the most powerful and demanding environments.
Movable Type Enterprise has been one of the most successful launches we’ve ever had at Six Apart. The energy that MT Enterprise has brought to our whole community will be paying off in a lot of ways in 2007, but first we wanted to mention why MT Enterprise might be right for you if you need to take your Movable Type blogs to the next level.

It then continues on with five “great” reasons to upgrade from Movable type to Movable Type Enterprise – none of which apply for personal users.

I’m not exactly sure when or how I signed up for said “Movable Type newsletter” – but back-digging through my email, I’ve received the following emails in the same vein:

* 7/26/06 – “A major upgrade to Movable Type now available”
* 9/12/06 – “Movable Type Price Promotion Extended”
* 11/1/06 – “Movable Type Makes the Most of Business Blogging”

The last email, I should note, covers the release of Movable Type Enterprise 1.5. Not 1.0 – 1.5. Of course, Movable Type Enterprise was actually [announced on March 7th, 2006](http://www.publish.com/article2/0,1895,1934831,00.asp), so it’s not as though the product is brand spanking new.

With the strong push about MT Enterprise, I’m left with a gut feeling that *I should not be using MovableType for my blog*. Even without the email, it’s not hard to come to this conclusion – the [Six Apart homepage](http://www.sixapart.com/) plainly says that Movable type is the “best choice for business blogging”. The [Movable Type homepage](http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/) says things like:

* “Helping Every Company Start A Blog”
* “The most popular platform for professional blogging”
* “Build your business on the shoulders of Movable Type”
* “Blogging Platforms for Small Businesses, Enterprises & Publishers at Movable Type”

The only indication that MovableType may not just be for business blogs is the “Recently Updated Sites” box where, depending on when you look, either a good portion or a significant majority of the sites listed are personal blogs.

There are other signs, too: Mena Trott, president of Six Apart and [baby squirrel](http://weblog.burningbird.net/2004/05/14/never-kick-a-sleeping-giant/), updated her official company blog “Mena’s Corner” four times in 2006. Four posts for the entire year. This blog is prominently advertised on the front page of the Six Apart site, billed as:

[a] chance to show the inner workings of a start-up and give the outside world a glimpse into our challenges, our achievements, and our professional passions.

Meanwhile, Mena’s [personal Vox blog](http://mena.vox.com/) has been updated (publicly) eight times so far this year. One month on Vox equals two times the volume of the company blog. And it’s not like there aren’t posts about the inner workings of the company – posts like [the CES post](http://mena.vox.com/library/post/weve-come-a-long-way.html), or [the one about the Vox World Tour contest](http://mena.vox.com/library/post/what-happiness-looks-like.html) would fit perfectly on Mena’s Corner.

Why am I counting this as a sign? Mena’s Corner runs on MovableType; DollarShort runs on Vox. Vox is new, MovableType is not.
I’m not trying to sit here and take potshots at Mena, or Ben, or Anil, or anyone else who works at Six Apart or loves their products. I am not a shareholder. I am not actively paying for any service, support, or product. It’s their company, and they’re welcome to run it however they want. And I certainly understand the enthusiasm for new products – I work in much the same way.

Simultaneously, I understand the need to drive into the enterprise. The research companies keep banging the pot and ladle about business blogging, and I harbor no grudge towards Six Apart for wanting a piece of that pie. But I feel like the software I’m using is being sacrificed to these ends.

That said, I have to be a bit selfish. I have a vested interest in this site: after all, this site is me. This blog has been running for nearly seven years – over a quarter of my life. In that time, I have graduated from college, gotten married, moved three times, crossed thousands of miles, met hundreds of people. I have seen the world, experienced so much, and grown into who I am today. As I have grown, so has this blog.

But the blog cannot solely be powered by me; I can only use the tools available to channel my thoughts and experiences. If the tools refuse to grow, neither can the blog.

If someone from Six Apart is out there and reading this, I leave you with only one question that needs answering:

**Is there any future in Movable Type as a personal (non-business) blogging platform?**

Email received, Thursday, 2:55 AM:

From: KONAMI INSIDER

To: Remy

Subject: Konami Insider: Take the Konami Customer Survey

Dear Remy,

Thank you for being a Konami Insider.

Please visit our survey so we can continue to make the games YOU want to play.

http://www.onlineregister.com/konami/survey/

Sincerely,

Konami

I am not naive enough to believe that my feedback to any web survey will provide enough weighted guidance to allow for the things *I* want to be made. But I am naive enough to think that such a survey would have the reasonable illusion of trying to solicit my feedback.
Question one of this four question survey:

Common sense violations encountered in this question:

– The acronym “NGC” has never been in widespread use. While I know what it’s supposed to expand to, the average Joe will not. (I suppose I should be thankful the survey did not use “GCN”, as I’ve seen a number of places.)
– There are no listings for any now-current gen consoles: the PS3, the Xbox 360, the Wii.

Question two:

Common sense violations encountered in this question:

– The code name “Nintendo Revolution” has not been in use since the console was renamed the Wii on April 27th, 2006. This is over six months ago.
– No one – and I mean no one – refers to a “DS” as a “Nintendo Dual Screen”.
– The Gameboy Micro, as far as I know, is not being made any more, and bombed fairly badly compared to all other Gameboy Advance versions, never mind both versions of the DS.

Question three:

Common sense violations encountered on this question:

– Why is Super Mario the example given for “Platform Games with Cartoon Characters”?
– Why is Gran Turismo the example given for “Action Racing Games”?
– Why is there even a category of “Mission Based Driving Games”? And, again, why GTA, which has classically been defined as a “sandbox game”?
– Why do you offer such specifics as “Life Simulation Games”, “Fishing/Hunting Games”, and “Wrestling Games”, while you simultaneously neglect genres that Konami has at least something of a reputation for – such as Stealth Action Games (e.g. Metal Gear Solid), Music Games (e.g. Dance Dance Revolution), Adventure Platform Games (e.g. Castlevania), or Shoot-em-ups (e.g. Gradius)?

Question four:

Common sense violations encountered on this question:

– This question does not contain the phrase “you, yourself,” unlike the previous three.
– Why is an example needed for “Renting game from a video store”? Or for “Visiting the game publisher’s website”? Or, hell, even “Seeing advertisements online”?
– It’s obvious just from the depth of this question and the 76 radio buttons that the point of the survey is not to actually make the sort of games that *I* want to play, but instead to refocus their advertising budgets appropriately to hit more “top influences”. It’s not the dishonesty of the survey that bothers me – it’s the principle of being so willing to take advantage of your customers. To lure them in with the half-empty promise of listening to them, and then blatantly try to suckle effective advertising channels out of them.

This, by the way, is the thanks you get for completing the survey:

I am baffled as to how anyone could think a survey like this provides anything remotely useful.