Six Apart creates Tumblr-type microblog

[charmian]

elena informed me that Six Apart has released Typepad Micro, which is basically a Tumblr knock-off plus native commenting.

This is met with some snark: http://twitter.com/gruber/status/5807355462

An employee of Six Apart's main rival, Automattic, talks about it: http://terrychay.com/article/typepad-micro.shtml

"The biggest lesson learned from P2 is that if you are looking for “micro” style content, you must put a content add page in the reading page: just like Twitter, Tumblr, and P2 do." (P2 is a Wordpress 'microblog' style layout)

http://www.stoweboyd.com/message/2009/11/typepad-goes-after-tumblr.html
An interesting assertion is made: eventually, users will demand reblogging EVERYWHERE, including in regular Typepad and Wordpress. Also some interesting comments on the "veil" of Tumblr; I have to say, you CANNOT understand Tumblr's appeal without going "behind the veil" and seeing it from the perspective of a logged in user.

It's an open question whether this will work: it's supposed to be free because the objective is to promote the Typepad platform. Yet, will people still want to pay for Typepad when they can use Wordpress.com for free? Or Tumblr for free? Do people who microblog even want to do regular type blogging and thus become Typepad customers? (I think what we're seeing is the casual/personal component of blogging basically leaving for microblogs and Twitter)

Anyway, I have a post brewing on Tumblr's discovery features and promotion. (BTW, how many of you use Tumblr?)

Comments

[sofiaviolet]

I am an epically lazy tumblr user.

[charmian]

Heh, Tumblr is good for the lazy!

[troisroyaumes]

Wow, Typepad Micro looks like a complete Tumblr clone. Is there any feature they're offering that's different? At least sites like Posterous are bringing something new to the table.

The popularity of reblogging is pretty interesting to me because when I was looking into the Korean blogosphere a few years back, one of the major differences that stood out to me was the near-universal "scrapbooking" feature that basically functions like reblogging (although functional across different platforms). Back then, I couldn't understand why people liked using this feature so much; now after converting to Tumblr I finally get it.

[charmian]

They have (built-in) commenting. XD Seriously, I don't really see how this will benefit Typepad much. Vox seems like a failure (not sure why Vox failed), and there's a lot to be gained in this field by being first and fairly good... (Posterous seems to me to not really be a Tumblr clone because of their lack of reblogging and obsession with Twitter (and other) integration)

Interesting! Do you have any English language info on how this works technically? Like it's some kind of cross-platform protocol? Maybe like a souped-up ShareThis?

[troisroyaumes]

Not sure if there's any English-language info, but I'll go look up how it actually works and give a rough translation of whatever I find.

[charmian]

Thanks!

[foxfirefey]

I'm not sure how that Automattic guy missed Vox.

[charmian]

That's a good point, so I commented on that myself. XD

.... I suppose Vox is just that un-noteworthy? XD

[foxfirefey]

It's not bad, it's just not huge, I guess. And, of course, it's neglected. I really liked their global tags, though.

I wonder what Tumblr's monetization strategy is.

[charmian]

Yeah, it has social networking characteristics, so it suffers from not having gotten large.

Tumblr has something like that: http://staff.tumblr.com/post/165735696/tag-channels

Premium features to be introduced at a later date, IIRC. I'm sure they could get some of their enterprise users to pay up.

[foxfirefey]

Yeah, looks like:

http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/12/tumblr-raises-money-touts-really-sexy-plus-accounts
http://scobleizer.com/2008/12/16/tumblrs-ceo-brainstorms-microblog-monetization/

And they could get some of their enterprise users to pay up, but enough?

[charmian]

It's hard to say without knowing their numbers, I suppose. I've seen various formulae about what is needed for freemium to work, and it really depends how much the users costs and the conversion rate.

[synecdochic]

Vox seems like a failure (not sure why Vox failed)

You want a serious answer to that? ;)

The fundamental underlying answer is 'mismanagement and flaws in the core concept', but it breaks down to:

1). Lack of feature development, usability improvements, and bugfixes. Their pace of innovation was so glacial that people drifted away when they realized that things that annoyed them wouldn't get fixed.

2). No community identity. For the small-social-network market, it's critical to have early adopters come from a particular (self-identified) community, like how MySpace did music, Facebook did colleges, and LJ, at the very very beginning, did camgirls. Vox had no built-in market, no 'hook' to get people to pay attention, and no 'story' that the people marketing the product were telling.

3). No customer engagement. The people using the site had no clear route to provide feedback, and the people making the decisions for the site had no way of polling the userbase. There was no central pillar of community news and no easy way for site adminstrators to disseminate a mass message without resorting to email (which most people delete unread).

Six Apart was never very good at community creation and nurturing. Fundamentally, the people in charge never understood what makes a viable online community; they were trying to use the same techniques they applied to creating a hosted broadcast service in TypePad, and broadcast and social media are fundamentally two separate beasts.

[charmian]

Sure, why not. :)

I really did notice that when I saw the staff blog. There seemed to be very few improvements to the site; it seemed as if they had just decided "ok, it's finished" and then gone off and done other things, except for the editorial.

Hmm, then we'll see how Typepad Micro goes. So far they seem to be doing some kind of Avatar promotion, but the whole effort really doesn't distinguish itself from Tumblr much.

[matgb]

LJ, at the very very beginning, did camgirls

Really? This is complete news to me, I had no idea.

I think the other key reason Vox failed is that it was, at a very base level, trying to be what LJ was, but with a modern UI. But it was palpable from the publicity that Mena et al just didn't get what either LJ actually was or what Vox could be; the only one who seemed to get it was Anil, and he wasn't in that team.

A great waste, if they'd done Vox as LJ-lite, same product, different, easier UI, it could've been a massive winner. But then we might not be here on DW at all...

[charmian]

Yeah, they did drop the ball. Although I wonder nowadays how much demand there is for LJ-lite, also, because of the myriad types of new blogging softwares which have sprung up. There seem to be many ways to use LJ, but I'm not really clear which are the most popular and most numerically important to the userbase.

[matgb]

I don't think the 'important to the userbase' thing matters so much. Vox was launched because 6A thought there was a gap in the market that it could plug. It was supposed to be a simple to use platform that allowed privacy and inbuilt reading, etc.

I think there is a gap in the market for that, or at least there could be, but that LJ, with a complete usability makeover, could've plugged that gap, whereas Vox simply didn't.

[charmian]

Hmm, so it was created to capitalize on LJ's deficiencies, I suppose. Some of its features did strike me as a marked improvement on LJ, such as the multi-media uploads. I guess what I'm wondering now is now that a lot of services are featuring inbuilt reading-lists and some of LJ's other features, is there now less of a market gap?

[matgb]

Probably--the mix of granular privacy with built in reading is good (although explaining granular privacy isn't easy for a marketer), and there're a bunch of other features that, if fixed, could be great.

But I don't think they created Vox to deal with LJ; I'm fairly sure, from the way it was marketed, that they just didn't know they were re-inventing the wheel, they appear to have bought LJ for the staff then realised they couldn't get away with that (then Brad left anyway).

[charmian]

Built in reading nowadays seems to be a popular feature; Tumblr has it, and so do quite a few microblogs, and even WP.com has a version...

Granular privacy can in a way be accomplished with other platforms that allow you to run multiple private blogs from one account, IMHO, so even that nowadays is not a really unique feature. (and in some ways, I think it's a better way of doing it?)

Really? How could they buy a company and not know what people use it for? Isn't the whole reason why they bought LJ was to get the staff who knew how to make such features?

What do you mean by "couldn't get away with that"? It seems to me they still have quite a bit of the ex-LJ staff still working there. Anyway, they seem to have made out rather well, because they sold LJ for a substantial amount more than they paid for it.

[matgb]

What do you mean by "couldn't get away with that"? It seems to me they still have quite a bit of the ex-LJ staff still working there.

Oh, absolutely, sorry--they seem to have a habit of buying companies with decent staff, shutting the product down, then putting those staff onto other pet projects. I'm not sure they realised just how vociferous the userbase on LJ would be, etc.

Really? How could they buy a company and not know what people use it for?

I have no clue, but either Mena was talking complete drivel whenever she was asked about LJ, or she really had no clue--we're all teenage girls talking about girlstuff, etc; no_lj_ads did a good job of documenting a lot of her sayings in the early days, it really was quite poor.

And when she was doing publicity for Vox, she was talking about the privacy options and similar as if it was a radically new idea that no one had ever done before. If your new product's main selling point is something a different product you have already does better, there's something wrong somewhere.

[synecdochic]

Isn't the whole reason why they bought LJ was to get the staff who knew how to make such features?

I'm guessing the reason they bought LJ was a). to get Brad, who had experience making high-traffic hosted sites scale on minimal hardware expenditure, and b). to control the major competitor for their planned new product. Then Brad left as soon as his golden handcuffs unlocked, Vox didn't have the adoption they were hoping for, and they were stuck with a userbase they didn't understand and didn't want, so they sold it off ASAP to somebody who did. :P

[synecdochic]

Ah, yes, that would be the 'I Told You So' effect, and part of why I quit. (I got tired of needing to say "I told you so", and they were getting so tired of hearing it, that I had the distinct feeling I was quitting ahead of the "staff reduction".) Nobody got LJ. Nobody. And, since you're absolutely right about Vox being LJ Lite, or at least in 6A's mind, the fact they didn't understand LJ at all (but thought they did) really showed.

There's also a fourth factor, but that really doesn't show to the outside world in any way other than subtly: contempt for the userbase. The inside culture at the time (may still be, but it was mostly driven by certain execs who aren't there anymore) was incredibly paternalistic across the board, and the attitude was "they'll take what we give them and they'll like it". But that's a rant for a different evening.

LJ ran on camgirls in the early years! They were the very early adopters. (And many people got accounts just to interact with their favorite camgirl.) Then fandom adopted it, and etc.

[sky]

I have a Tumblr, but I basically never use it. I haven't really found anything to do with it, and the lack of any real conversation with readers/other users is kinda frustrating. I've never enjoyed shouting into a void.

[charmian]

Yeah, it's not really that great for deep interaction. Light interaction, yeah. I don't really mind shouting into a void that much, if I can tell people are reading, although it does get annoying if you do things like ask questions and people ignore you.

[amber]

I use Tumblr! I find it really interesting that 'standard' opinion of most users I see seems to be that you should be offering content without commentary; photos and audio and links specify their subject and maybe hve a "lol" or "i love this" after it but not much else, and "rebloggers" frequently delete this. But I also see all these people using Tumblr solely to offer commentary on things they like.