Six Apart Drinks Your Milkshake
Six Apart has announced that they have acquired Apperceptive, a design and development firm focused on social-media sites and blogs, and that Apperceptive is now part of the new Six Apart Services segment of their company. Now, Six Apart isn’t just producing social software, they’re working with companies to plug it in. (Think: IBM selling WebSphere Portal to companies via IBM Global Services.)
I think it was a great move to acquire Apperceptive since they’re such a talented team, but I think this is bad news for many independent blog design and development firms. Anil Dash doesn’t think so and he said the following in an interview:
“We’re not aiming to compete with the amazing community of consultants we have today — we want to grow the entire market for consulting around our platforms. One way that can work is, for example, our team might join a third-party consultant on a pitch or proposal to a key client that they want to work with.”
How can Six Apart say that they’re not “aiming to compete” with current Movable Type consultants when they bought one of the largest MT-centric consulting firms out there, and are now offering their services under a branded Six Apart banner? Isn’t that the definition of “aiming to compete”?
In July 2002, Apple acquired Emagic, makers of Logic pro-audio software and then immediately discontinued the Windows version of the application. For two years Apple worked on creating Logic Pro which was a combination of many Emagic applications, and now Logic Pro is one of the best pro-audio software suites out for the Mac. Smaller audio software makers that competed with Emagic in the early 2000s were pushed out of the Mac market after the acquisition, since Logic Pro had a lot more money and engineers behind it, not to mention it was created by makers of the hardware is was to run on which is an obvious advantage (compare iPhone software slickness with the garbage that other cellphones have.) Now, Logic Pro is one of the few games in town for serious audio professionals using Mac OS X.
Apperceptive has put together some very solid social websites for a number of large clients, spearheaded by David Jacobs who has been a leader in the Movable Type consulting industry for many years. With the acquisition by Six Apart, all his large clients will now be Six Apart’s large clients, and there’s really no way to know how “small” of a company 6A will target since they now have a dedicated services arm. Six Apart is a company and companies need to make money, so if there’s an MT-focused project up for bidding, you know that they’ll be all over it.
When Anil Dash says that this acquisition will grow the market for Movable Type consulting, I believe him. However the acquisition of Apperceptive lets Six Apart reel in a larger part of those consulting projects, leaving less fish for everyone else to eat. Six Apart has been working hard on building their developer community up to match the one surrounding WordPress, and I really can’t see this as a something that developers would appreciate.
Anil, since you’re great at finding entries I write about MT, I’d appreciate if you could shed some light on what size projects Six Apart Services will be going after following this acquisition. Is it only major companies or will it drop down to medium-sized blogs that were within the realm of designers/developers like myself?
(Note: I designed and developed MT-powered websites from 2004-2007 for various sized clients, and have always preferred Movable Type to WordPress.)
Tyme White # —
They launched an advertising network too. Reading their article and how passionate they are about blogging I didn’t get that same vibe I used to have about them being passionate about blogging. It seems like they are more passionate about monetizing blogging. I wish them luck though…it’s a bold move.
Scrivs # —
All I kept thinking was there was enough business to have a large MT consulting firm? As Tyme mentions it’s the advertising platform that caught my attention. Everyone trying to own their vertical now.
Tyme White # —
I thought about this some more and I have some questions.
1) The services SA is rolling out potentially makes a blogger completely dependent on SA. Why would a blogger take that risk? Hosting, design, monetizing - why would a blogger pick SA to be completely dependent on? I don’t mean disrespect but there is a history of SA changing direction.
2) What exactly are the goals of the company? At one time there was the “safe harbor” of knowing the SA focused on making great blogging software. As the focus expanded the resulting products lagged and now the extra layer of possible future competition with the company one could easily become dependent on exists. The focus of the company is unclear to me.
Again, I don’t mean disrespect but when a company changes focus and begins competing with sub-sections of their community base I think it warrants some of the tougher questions.
Mike Rundle # —
With regards to 6A being the “full solution” I think perhaps they’re looking at the success that Automattic is having with Wordpress.com as the full solution and are trying to go up against that.
I have no clue what the goals of 6A are now. They’re digging into many, many arenas and it doesn’t look like they have a clear vision.
Is Six Apart Services Killing Smaller Movable Type Designers and Developers? : The Blog Herald # —
[…] will be very hard, if not impossible, to compete with. I think Mike Rundle is pretty much spot on in his post on the matter. He notes that he’s always preferred Movable Type to WordPress, which is interesting since […]
Jesse Gardner # —
Hey guys!
I wrote about this at length over at my blog, so I’ll try to keep this short:
I can tell you, as an independent contractor whose livelihood rests almost completely on Movable Type development and design, I’m really looking forward to this so long as Six Apart implements it correctly.
First of all, let’s state the obvious: Six Apart needs it’s developers. It makes absolutely no sense for them to drive them away. They’ve stated both publicly and privately that they will not poach customers. What would they have to gain by killing off all the people who are out there creating great things with their product?
With that in mind, I think Six Apart is trying to accomplish two major goals: appeal to customers who need official implementation and enable developers.
The first goal is fairly straightforward in my mind: legitimize the platform.
Here’s how I picture the second working: Now that Six Apart is actually using their product to solve customer problems, they’re not only more concerned with the things that really matter to developers, but they’re also coming up with solutions that I can use.
I’ve spoken with Anil Dash, Chris Alden and David Jacobs at length about this. The solutions that they come up with on the company’s dime they want to either fold into the core or make available to developers. In fact, David Jacobs has been assigned as a liaison between the Pronet community and Six Apart. My first thought was: “Huzzah, one of us!”
With an actual development team working for Six Apart, things that have up until now not gotten the attention they need—documentation, standardization, APIs—will suddenly take on a whole new importance.
And that’s why I’m really psyched.
Jeremy # —
@tyme - That is just it… Bloggers won’t be completely dependent on SA. There is still a large and growing community of developers but for those large clients that want the specialized attention of SA they can now have it.
@Mike - SA already has Typepad a “full solution” hosted blog service. Now SA is getting back to its roots and offering extra services to those who do want it.
Michele # —
There’s always plenty of space in a market for competition.
RedHat offers consultation and professional services, but that doesn’t stop lots of other people from making very healthy livings from RedHat
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