SixApart finally launched the new Movable Type (MT4) the other day. This is, by far, the biggest product release for MT. Lots of new features, plugins and improvements.
Nevertheless, all that splash hasn’t really made huge waves in the blog software industry. SixApart, even with its wide range of blogging products and services (LiveJournal, Vox, TypePad, MT and the now discontinued SplashBlog), may have lost its chance to get back its groove.
Is it too late for Movable Type? I’m afraid so.
- The product had a traumatic commercial history. Remember the free-to-pay move of SixApart before? That was bad rep and a bad rep that made many users stayed away from them for good.
- A lot of people have forgotten about MT. My last use of the app was way back in 2003. Familiarity can be a huge stumbling block in the re-introduction.
- Free themes. MT doesn’t have that much of it. One of the coolest benefits of going WordPress is the fact that you can grab tons and tons of kick-ass themes on the fly and install them in a jiffy.
- Plugins and extensions. Same as above, MT doesn’t have much of it in that area.
- There a new and more familiar players like Drupal, which are free too.
- Lastly, support and community. Since the product is free, expect little or no support from the company. It’s common to most free products. That’s where the community steps in, but, will there be enough experts in that realm to actually sustain it?
But hey, go look and find out for yourself. There might be some features there that could convince you otherwise. As for me, I… might… just play around with it.
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i’m already contented with Wordpress and the activeness of the Wordpress team.
i tried it once and just don’t like it.
Im convinced, I will stick with wordpress.
I am encoutering so much problem about MT before so I am sticking in blogger anyway and it’s free with many cool features also we have a Poll bar now…
I love blogger
in the other network I blog for, we’re using MT. i hope they’d switch to WP but eh, they take care of their tech stuff. I just have to blog.
Sad to say yes, it’s too late for MT.
I’m afraid so. Not only for MT but also for other upcoming CMS like Habari. WordPress has had a good headstart and has grabbed most of the market share and is keeping users happy.
Like you what mentioned about plugins and themes, Wordpress has so many free plugins and themes to choose from that you can use to customize your blog. It’s kinda like the Firefox of CMS.
Most bloggers who try WordPress never look back. The only reasons I see that’s holding back other bloggers from switching to a standalone WordPress installation are the costs of web hosting and domain names which others can’t afford. Yeah, of course there’s WordPress.com but features are limited.
I’m not so sure Abe; the new interface rocks and the fear of CGI aside, it’s pretty easy to install, and the push rather than pull paradigm has always had its appeal for me — not that I get much traffic to feel the load, mind you, but I’m a ‘less queries is more’ kind of guy.
sorry for the double post, but the postgresql support is also a plus for me
If I’m not mistaken, Denton was having difficulty with MT a while ago. And he cites the reasons you’ve written here.
@jorge, for more advanced bloggers like you, MT might have a better chance to regain users. But for the ordinary blogger who are already very familiar with WordPress or Blogger, it will need more than that.