1 post tagged “automattic”
Jeremiah asks which Enterprise software vendor will be the first to buy a blogging platform. It's a question I gave some thought to myself at the start of this year and I've concluded that the answer might well be none of them.
Wordpress is infected with the GPL which means the code is valueless and Automattic is one of those companies which can be rendered valueless should the talent walk or someone does to their support model what Oracle are trying to do to RedHat's. Trust me, if WordPress support turns into a big money spinner you'll see people move on that business.
Six Apart has assets beyond people, and they've moved into the advertising business with Livejournal and Vox. While you have people in their late teens to mid-twenties showing other people their latest piercings & new tattoos on LJ you have people in mid-twenties and beyond showing people pictures of their new pets on Vox. One wonders if an Enterprise Software Company sees their growth coming from running consumer level social networks? That's more a media/advertising play than a technology play. Typepad is for Bloggers with a capital B while Movable Type is something which could find a place in Enterprises but I wonder if it won't/doesn't run head first into Microsoft SharePoint when it does?
One also has to ask if Six Apart could turn out to be hideously overpriced since it's one of those web born entities which went off and did what it said it would, instead of making huge pronouncements before limping off to die somewhere as most web born entities tend to do? If it's cheaper to just develop the functionality for existing ECM products that's what a lot of ECM companies will probably do. Buying someone like Automattic or Six Apart would have to be a pure eyeball scooping exercise.
Of course all the above is subject to Storagezilla's 27th law:
You've put your personal opinion in print, now the universe will go to the trouble of making you look really, really dumb.
Interesting announcement from EMC last week, if any software provider wants to use the Embedded Documentum platform as their content management foundation they can do that today with the OEM edition. It's bullet proof, so go build something no one else has thought about before with it.
