DrunkenBlog

This is why VCs bring in the MBAs

Spent a bunch of time this evening (ok, morning now) getting started on integrating categories into DrunkenBlog, and seeing what kind of a speed hit might be associated with them. The actual category pages are pretty rough, as, well, I hit my RSS feeds and saw the new "MovableType Publishing Platform" announcement and got distracted by the sound of my head banging against the wall.

MT is decent software, even if its kind of rough in areas. But what they're looking at doing is just silly, and is going to be incredibly detrimental. They've always had very... "iffy" licensing, and lots of people have been chomping at the bit and looking for alternatives... but a combination of inertia and features kept people using or trying to work around the license issues.

But this is just beyond stupid, it's just obvious they don't "get it". And really the reaction looks to be about 95% negative.

Oh, I'm sure they'll try to spin it... At some point soon you'll see one of them come out and try to throw all sorts of spin on this, using lots of vague terms and mentioning "people who have to live", "mouths to feed", "features aren't free", etc. in the coming while.

Unfortunately since they don't "get it" it means they're going to be extremely guarded and somewhat genuinely surprised at the backlash, but they also view the users as separate from themselves, so they think it'll die down and there'll be a few statements from them akin to: "we understand your concerns, but trust us...".

When you consider how vastly & immediately negative the response has been, and they still seem to be saying "this will be best for everyone!" over and over as a mantra as though saying it enough times will make it true... that's already started.

Oh, it will die down, but mostly because users become resigned to using something else, primarily because they've been given the incentive to do so. And as they do, the network effect starts to take hold, with more users equaling more attention & features... and eventually one gets marginalized.

This was already going to happen (and was already happening) under the original fubar license due to ISPs and hosting providers, but most were hoping MovableType would get with it and the 3.0 license would work most of that out. Ah well, it just would have taken longer under the old license, as people just have more incentive now. Oh well.

The last company I saw do this that I actually had any sort of time/money investment in was Codetek, with their VirtualDesktop product. I can tell you they had it all laid out for them: why what they were going to with their pricing & feature bundling was wrong, and what was going to happen, and why they were screwing themselves.

It's all happened, and they know they have a problem, which is why you've seen them change their pricing & feature bundling several times in an effort to stem the tide, why they've tried to do some of the things I suggested in a way that completely negates the value of doing them, and why they are constantly running "special sales". But now its too late, and they're being eaten from the bottom, and they're just annoying and confusing their users to an even greater degree with all the backtracking and mucking around while the alternatives improve and even surpass them in some areas as the user-base builds and more support comes in.

The same thing is going to happen with MT... I doubt they'll try to revise the license before 3.0 really ships, as that would just make them feel foolish, but they will when they realize what's starting to go on after the first influx of cash. But I doubt they'll get it even then. They may lower their pricing, thinking that's the real issue, but it won't solve much. Then they'll try to play with features included between the various licenses, and all the while their user-base will eventually shrink. In between all that you'll see some serious circling of the wagons, with more proprietary & incompatible tech included.

Oh, they'll make some cash, no doubt about that... lots of people will feel locked-in, in that they've already sold a client on a solution and to change would just be too big of a hassle, or their sunk costs are perceived to be too large.

And if SixApart ends up doubling the prices come 3.5 or 4.0, people will feel as though they have sunk costs they need to recoup. Watch for the blog-wars, where the MT users disparage the alternatives, because well, MT will have X features and it's what the people who say they appreciate the finer touches use... but really MT will be what they know through built-up inertia, or it may become a veblen.

I could be wrong, and they'll get smacked by this and make a sweeping change, but it's doubtful, and I wish it wasn't. I'm inherently lazy, and I have my own inertia investment built up in MT... so I'd really like to be wrong about this, but I know I'm going to have to end up using something else so I'm not banging my head against the wall after every stupid thing they do. That guanxi spot in my heart is already taken by another technology company with a fruit logo.

This is basic path dependancy stuff, and once you've hit that road you only have so long to backtrack before there's no way you can make it to the station behind or ahead of you without running out of gas. SixApart is just the latest company to fall victim to marketing myopia, they're just doing it in a spectacularly glaring way.

Real Software is another good example of a company who's screwed the pooch this badly, and still hasn't really "gotten it". They're both akin to an infant, they can see where they want to go, but don't have the control to get there. Sure they make some progress towards the shiny thing, but it's more accidental from the general flailing than anything.

During the .com days, the venture capitalists walked into companies and pushed MBAs and marketing guys down their throats, and oh how it was resented. "It's about the tech, stupid!".

In some cases these MBA and marketing types screwed the pooch, but by and large these guys were brought in because almost invariably when someone hits a specific size and scope they run into big, big trouble. They don't know about things like price points, the network effect, social capital, prospect theory, conjoint analysis, sustainable competitive advantage or porter analysis, but I can pretty much guarantee their users are going to become very, very familiar with price elasticity.

Those links and 20 minutes should give you a handle of why they're in trouble, but at this point it doesn't really matter. They've run an excel spreadsheet that says X users at Y price will mean mad cash... showing them something like a bell curve with price points is voodoo to them after they've seen that spreadsheet sum.

Now don't get me wrong... they might think they understand some of these things in a roundabout way: like I said, they know where they want to get... they're all about the vendor lock-in. They just have no clue about getting there. We've just been down this road before, there are a myriad of examples to point to if you're so inclined... this is how MySQL got its start, then Gnome...

Ah well, I'm really glad I decided against using some of the more syntax-butchering plugins out there until the licensing got ironed out (I've kinda predicted it for awhile to various people), so whatever I push to will be relatively painless.

I've started looking at WordPress, which uses MySQL & PHP and is getting good buzz and has v1.2 in beta which should be out very soon. It's GPL'd, as in you don't need to worry about drastic things happening... all you have to worry about is continued development.

Feature-wise it seems to be going just fine for free so far, but really at the cost of some of these movabletype licences, if there was something you had to have in it, it'd pay itself back very, very quickly. And chances are there's something you want that company or individual X may want in it and it'll show up sooner rather than later... the network effect.

So far I've found this excellent page on migrating from Movabletype to WordPress, including links to tutorials and tools for converting a movabletype-based site to WordPress, comparisons of MT's tags to WordPress', example styles, frequently asked questions, and various forum & support links. My favorite was a reference to a tool that will spit out pages during the conversion so that all your MT-based urls redirect to the corresponding WordPress url.

There's also Textpattern, which I'm still going through, but it looks pretty decent. Looks like the worst of this will be just having to learn something a little new, and a frill here and there.

Slick stuff, looking forward to going through it.

 Posted by drunkenbatman
    May 14, 2004, at 11:18 AM