Six Apart News & Events: December 2008

About a week ago, we launched a beta test of a new application for Movable Type called Motion. It's a powerful new social application that combines the insights we've learned from the smartest social sites across the web with unique new open technologies we've invented here at SIx Apart. We've gotten a great response from the community about Motion, and it's on track for release in early 2009 as a free application for any user of Movable Type Pro.

If you want to check out Motion here are a few easy ways to get started:

• Read all about Motion and find out what it's good for and what features it includes.
  
• Sign up for a hosted demo of the platform, and we'll walk you through Motion and the thinking that's inspired it.
• Test out a live Motion site where dozens of community members have already registered and tried out the Motion experience for themselves.

(Note: Content on the demonstration site can be reset or deleted at any time, and we regularly take the site offline as new updates to the Motion application are installed.)

The Web is in Motion

Just as important to us as the technologies we've developed are the ideas behind Motion. These philosophical underpinnings are explained in our blog post introducing Motion. We believe that the right strategy for connecting your blog or site to the world of social networking is not to select one particular social network to hold all the cards, but to connect to all of the powerful and vibrant social networks across the web.

In our internal conversations we've referred to these principles (with tongue firmly in cheek) as The Laws of Motion, and given our company name, there are naturally six of them. Here's what Motion is meant to demonstrate:

• The biggest online social network is the internet itself.
• Today's mainstream social networks are like yesterday's mainstream media.
• Reveal the community you already have.
• Your social network belongs under your control.
• Your community should start with half a billion members.
• The web is in Motion.

We've explained each of these principles at length in the Motion announcement on our blog, but the most exciting news is that unlike even a year ago when the number of companies that believed in these principals could be counted largely on one hand, today our partners and peers all over the World and across the web agree with these ideas and have begun the work of connecting all of our sites together.

Facebook Connect? Google Friend Connect? Why Choose‽

The most visionary social networking sites on the web are naturally the first ones to embrace this idea of interconnectedness. For example, the newly-announced Facebook Connect plugin directory features the brand-new, open source Facebook Connect plugin for Movable Type which we first previewed here on this blog earlier this year.

This plugin is a free download that works with any Movable Type 4.2 installation, but what's better is that this functionality is built right in to Motion, along with support for authentication through Google, Yahoo, AOL/AIM, and any other popular OpenID provider. There's never been an application like this, which supports the half a billion individual accounts across these services, allowing almost anyone on the web to comment on or favorite your content without having to register to create an account.

And while the technology we're talking about is pretty cool, at this time of year, we know everyone's mind is on the coming new year and what it will hold. Though this geeky stuff can pale in significance to the personal and global issues that rightly come first, at Six Apart we do care deeply about the web and the conversations it makes possible. So as we gear up for 2009, we can't help but see it as a hopeful sign that an ambitious and fairly idealistic vision for the future of the social web has gotten such a positive early response.

We can't wait to see how the open web evolves, continue working to help it evolve faster, and we're even more excited to see what our community does with these new abilities in the coming year.

Back when WordPress 2.5 came out earlier this year, we wrote a cheeky post called "A WordPress 2.5 Upgrade Guide" which pointed out some of the areas where we think our Movable Type platform offered a good option for people who wanted to consider alternatives to WordPress.

But today, WordPress 2.7 is out, and any day a great new upgrade for a blogging platform is released is a day that's good for all bloggers and for the web. So, to celebrate the release of WordPress 2.7, we've put together a list of resources that show how we at Six Apart are committed to helping all bloggers, regardless of platform. Here's a quick list of how Six Apart can help WordPress bloggers. Most of these services are powered by our completely reinvented TypePad infrastructure. And as you'd expect, all of these options are either free or open source or both.

• TypePad AntiSpam: TypePad AntiSpam is like Akismet in that it blocks junk comments on your site. But TypePad AntiSpam is different because it's built on an open source engine, it's free (no matter how you use it) and our users tell us it has fewer false positives, while still being 100% compatible with the Akismet API. We've even got a WordPress plugin that makes connecting to the service a snap, and some great giant WordPress-powered sites like Techcrunch have seen great results with it.

• Six Apart Media Advertising: Want to try actually making money with your blog? We've got over a thousand bloggers in the Six Apart Media advertising program already, with many of their sites powered by WordPress. Both our bloggers and our advertisers tell us they love working with a partner that really understands blogging. (If you're on WordPress.com and can't run your own ads, we can help you get set up with a blog where you can.)

• TypePad Connect: This free service just launched in beta and easily connects to any WordPress.org blog to offer really powerful commenting and beautiful, customizable commenter profiles on your site. Naturally, since OpenID was born at Six Apart, TypePad Connect and these cool new TypePad profiles have OpenID baked in, too. (WordPress.com users can't install a service like TypePad Connect yet, but perhaps you can suggest the idea and hopefully it'll be added.) If you want, you can just get your free TypePad profile and use it to track your comments or to provide links to your other accounts — this replaces the old TypeKey system that you might remember.

• Blog It: This great, free application powered by TypePad lets you easily update multiple blogs and services from an Apple iPhone or right within Facebook. With one click, you can post to blogs on WordPress.com, WordPress.org, Movable Type, TypePad, Blogger and most other blogs, while also updating your status on Facebook, FriendFeed or Twitter. Write once, and publish anywhere.

• Blog Link: In an economy like the one we're facing today, even our blogs need to play a role in helping out our careers. We make that easy with our new, free LinkedIn application Blog Link, powered by TypePad. Blog Link automatically displays headlines from any blog you use (whether it's on WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, Movable Type or anything else) right on your LinkedIn profile. Now the ideas you publish on your blog can be part of what your employers or partners see when they check you out on LinkedIn.

All of these services and tools are just the beginning of what we're already offering to millions of bloggers around the world, regardless of which platform you use to publish your blog. For example, our Six Apart Services team has built some of the biggest social media sites in the world, including ones powered by WordPress, though of course we think they're the best Movable Type and TypePad development teams in the world.

Blogging and the future of the social web is bigger than any one platform or any one company, and that's why we've always offered different platforms for different audiences, and worked hard to be a good resource to all bloggers. So we offer our congratulations to the whole WordPress community on an exciting launch, and especially to the many WordPress bloggers who are Six Apart customers as well.

There are, of course, official docs available if you're looking for help upgrading your WordPress install, and we strongly recommend it as it's important to stay up to date in order to keep your site secure. And finally, while we're of course proud first and foremost of the tremendous effort with put into Movable Type, TypePad and Vox, we do sincerely hope our roster of services offer a nice set of upgrades to make this new version of WordPress even better. Let us know what you think.

I am pleased to announce that today we are welcoming the Pownce team and technology to Six Apart. Pownce launched in June of 2007 and opened to the public earlier this year, but, as mentioned on the Pownce blog, Pownce.com will be closing in the next few weeks. We have a lot of respect for what this team has done and believe we share a common vision about making the Internet more social.

We have been impressed not only with the vision for Pownce but the great work of Leah Culver and Mike Malone and are very happy that they will be joining us. We’re also very excited to welcome Kevin Rose and Daniel Burka as advisers to Six Apart. The Pownce team and Six Apart share the same passion for social blogging and we’re really proud to have them on board.

For Pownce users, we are very sorry the site will be closing. We welcome you to join us on Vox - Leah and Mike are there! - and we hope the Pownce and Vox communities can come together, just as the teams have, towards a better future. For the Pownce Pro users, we would like to offer you a free TypePad account for a year. All Pownce users will receive an email with further instructions about exporting content out of Pownce and signing up for Vox or TypePad accounts.

We’re planning on doing great things with the help and expertise of the Pownce team, and can’t wait to see all the results of their hard work.