Stupid if True

The latest rumor making the rounds is that Six Apart, of Movable Type and TypePad fame, is set to buy LiveJournal. This move, if it does occur, will likely prove to be one of the most bone-headed acquisitions ever made. Where are the synergies between the two outfits' operations? There aren't any. Where is the gain in market power? There's none to be had. What advantages of scale are there to be reaped? None whatsoever. Is Six Apart an advertisement broker in need of greater reach? Not at all. One can't even make a plausible case that LJ users might be convinced to move up to the more expensive TypePad service: if they wanted to, it wouldn't need an acquisition by Six Apart for it to happen.

This whole thing stinks to me of mismanagement and the muddle-headed thinking we saw all too much of during the dotcom era. Six Apart is doing a rather atrocious job of responding to the needs of its existing user base as it is - the more experience I have fighting with TypePad's all-too-limited comment management features, the more I regret paying for the service - but instead of knuckling down to the boring work of improving their platform for their existing base of paying customers, they seem to be more interested in playacting as if they were big-time corporate types.

My prediction: if this deal goes through, Six Apart will not only find out that it has overpaid for LiveJournal (as is the case in the great majority of buyouts), but will also steadily bleed paying customers, as the distractions of absorbing its new acquisition wreak havoc on its already anemic responsiveness to the concerns of its existing customer-base.

Comments

[Factory]

The main criticism I've heard about MT is that is essentially an application program written by web developers, ergo it's been badly designed and thus hard to maintain. If this is true then MT will need some major restructuring to moved to a better engineered application.
But this will take time, and the first restructured version will be prolly be crap.

OTOH MT blogs don't look like a programmer designed them, which is generally a good thing.

[Abiola Lapite]

"OTOH MT blogs don't look like a programmer designed them, which is generally a good thing."

Yup, they look great, but are a b*tch to manage. Can you say "high maintenance?"

[praktike]

I don't get this move either. Of course, I still don't understand why Google bought blogger, so I'm a little behind the curve.

As for MT, I can't stand the fact that you have to rebuild it all the time and that it uses cgi, but they did make some nice, clean templates. This, by the way, is a great screed:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/2/171117/8823

[Abiola Lapite]

"Wow, I didn't know you were a business analyst with deep knowledge of the two companies."

What a daft statement. Guess what, hombre? Investment banking analyst was once my job description. And guess what field I was covering? Yes, that's right ...

"I can actually see quite a few, but then, I had to think about it for more than five seconds..."

Then why don't you TELL us what these are? Anyone can engage in empty bullshitting: don't tell us that you know, SHOW it.

"Wow, THAT'S a lot of speculation and fluffery."

Yeah, it's pure speculation that I'm putting up with crap controls and an unresponsive customer service operation for something I'm shelling out my own cash for ...

"Uhh, you DON'T. Turn on your dynamic templates..."

Shows how little you actually know, doesn't it? TypePad DOESN'T have dynamic templates, genius!

In future, I'd suggest you keep your mouth closed and think a little before criticizing those who know what they're talking about a lot better than you do.

[LJ MT Using Idiot]

[You know what? Your mother should have taught you some manners. I've had enough of your rubbish, and it's precisely the absence of effective tools to control obnoxious, cowardly little morons like you that makes me loathe the TypePad service so much - A.L.]