Aren’t you supposed to do the market research first and the pricing structure after?

I have never used MT other than a toy install on my local network, but the post referred to above puts 6A on my “do not do business with” list.

I’d have to confess that I’m not sure how the hell it’s done as I’ve never taken any courses on how to run a business and most of the companies I’ve worked for don’t seem to follow any normal sense of logic anyway.

In defence of Six Apart they are new at this being-a-company thing so I’m not against cutting them some slack on it. It literally started as two people who wrote software they thought would be nice to share with others and they never expected to turn it into an actual company. I’d count this as growing pains.

In at least one location, I saw mention of a survey of 2500 bloggers they’d done that was the basis for their pricing/licensing structure.

I suspect, though can’t know for certain, that the most vocal critics of the new schema are *not* necessarily typical of the majority of bloggers.  However, I also suspect that they have been more vocal advocates of MT, bringing in a lot of the bloggers (“I’m starting a blog—what would you suggest I use?“) and providing a lot of free advertising and mind-share in the blogging community.

Indeed. I’m think I fall into the “non-typical” usage as well as the “vocal supporter” camp as there’s at least a half-dozen blogs out there running MT at my suggestion and, often, assistance. Most of those that I’ve helped get going fall under the “free” license without too much issue.

It was actually an interesting exercise. I had a general idea of how many blogs I have, etc., but I hadn’t sat down and counted.  End result:  5 blogs, 5 authors (given my understanding of active vs inactive, etc.).

That just fits into the first-tier personal pay plan ($70, $100 eventually).  But it would be so easy to go over that number.  And it would be possible—with some degradation of functionality—to get down into the 3-and-1.  But both would be trivial exercises that wouldn’t represent significantly more or less exploitation of 6A’s intellectual property.

Is $70 okay?  Yeah, I guess.  Is $100?  Hmmm. I spend more than that on some hobbies, to be sure (and on a regular basis), but in a single explicit lump, it seems pretty high.  Certainly the most I’ve spent on any given piece of software I’ve ever bought.

Still not ready to jump ship, but not ready to leap into 3.0, either.

I have a question. What makes a blog publisher choose to go with something like MT over a free service like blogger.com.

I’m curious is there is one really clear cut reason. Advertising revenue? It’s cool to run your own domain and server? I’m a hacker for hacking’s sake?

I blog on blogger. My images are stored on the free 10meg of FTP I get with my cable modem. Comments are handled by Haloscan for free, and tracking is handled by sitemeter for free.

I seem to have a huge amount of control over look and feel. What am I missing by not having my own server, domain, and blogging software?

If you’re happy with what you’ve got then you’re not missing a thing.

I went with MT back in the day because it was free, like blogger, and I could use it on my own webserver. For me it was largely a matter of control. Not only can I have whatever domain name I want on my own server, but I can install other scripts to do other things in addition to MT and then integrate them into the sites I host. Prior to blogging I ran a couple of anime related websites one of which I coded by hand before I started learning how to install and use CMS systems. Once you get used to DIY I suppose you have a hard time doing it any other way.

Is that better than relying on a hosted service like Blogger? Depends on what you want to do and how much work you want to put into it. If you’re happy with what you’ve got then that’s all you need.

The whole Mena post is condescending and patronizing. Instead of owning up to what was a clear foul-up on their part, they put the onus on the blogging community. What kind of business grudgingly (and that is how the post reads) does market research AFTER they announce a product?!

I don’t have 13 blogs and 25 authors. i have one blog and one author. If Mena is interested, these numbers will make it much easier for me to migrate to Wordpress.

Gotta give Six Apart credit for recognizing the situation and being willing to listen.

They do.  They really do.  Hopefully that ends up with the best results for both the company and us.

I suspect, though can’t know for certain, that the most vocal critics of the new schema are *not* necessarily typical of the majority of bloggers.

So, so true.  And that’s just the microcosm.  None of US are really normal compared to those people out on the street…

What kind of business grudgingly (and that is how the post reads) does market research AFTER they announce a product?!

Errrm, a startup who is a limited budget because they’ve been giving all of their product away for two and a half years?

Jay, you almost sound like an apologist I concur with Matt that by all appearances they grudgingly backpedal, which can only mean they didn’t do their due dilligence on market research.  And if they’ve been VC-funded for 2.5 years, they’ve had plenty of time and funds to do that.

I have no axe to grind with 6A, but the events surrounding their licensing policies lead me to believe that 6A exhibits poor business sense. Having said that, their contracts with their VC’s may not leave them much choice.

Almost invariably, free projects turned commercial alienate the user base that helped shape the product.