This summer isn’t just for hot movie releases; it’s also for inventive internet companies to release impressive new products and the internet mole men to spend the entirety of their webspace to whine about these new products.
This month Six Apart and Google (Blogger’s parent company) have released new products to recognize the growing community of bloggers, but with any change there is a foreseeable backlash from the very people they serve.
How does a fledgling new medium grow when its community is so self-destructive? If you approach the new medium in a way not identical to ‘the not-so-well-established standard’ the community will reign down on you from above.
The echosph… [cough]… blogosphere consists of lemmings who claim to be creative when they’re just following the orders of a few smarter figures. Face the fact that there are some people who are creative, and there are some people who are not. I’m not creative. Do you think when Mozart set out to write a concerto he strived to invent something new? No, he had the idea in his head and he wrote it out. If some people happen to like it, even better. Staring at a blank paper/screen with no inspiration and trying to come up with a great new idea does not work.
Back to the point at hand, a lot has been happening in the realm of weblogs lately and the community seems to be up in arms about everything.
The new Blogger is simply unbelievable. It’s also the subject of a lot of bitching – in order to comment you must be a registered user of the Blogger service or the blog must have Anonymous comments enabled. The comment ‘neutering’ is being whined about because it’s similar to what people bitched about when Six Apart announced TypeKey. From the vendor’s standpoint, weblog spam had gotten out of hand and comment registration, while a temporary fix, is the best fix for now. I disagree – removing the incentive for comment spam which is commonly called Google Juice has worked fine for me. Instead of linking directly to a commenter’s website (which would be advantageous to a spammer) it Movable Type links to a redirecting file on my site. Speaking of Movable Type…
Six Apart Announced Movable Type 3.0 Developer Edition
If you want to upgrade, you “have” to pay for Movable Type. Outlandish! Why oh why would Mena and Ben want to make money? TypePad’s numbers will presumably fall with the new Blogger launch, especially if Google advertises it. Movable Type is wonderful software, but commercial software is not something I can not afford at this time. I’ll be switching to WordPress which is open source. Charging money for hard work is just wrong according to the blogosphere – heaven forbid Mena and Ben work FULL TIME on their products and want a roof over their heads.
Google’s blog announced, already under scrutiny
Essentially what happened here is an employee ran his/her mouth about outsourcing—Google PR did not enjoy this, so they edited the entry. Laws no! Google edited an entry to cover their asses. Oh, and they aren’t having whomever writes the entry’s name appended to the entry. Why can’t anyone just let them be? I’m thrilled that I have the opportunity to read Google’s blog. But the hounds in the blogosphere has to go as far as claiming Google is Orwellian in their edit.
Fuck, if the whining keeps up at this rate the truly creative will cease to experiment with this medium and blogs will die.
Everyone will be so busy not comforming that the blogosphere won’t realize they’re all running MT 2.6x (validating XHTML, CSS) with their Atom feeds, a boxed in site design, a lame photoblog, liberal political commentary, and horrible grammar.
