Interview: Six Apart's degree of Weblog integration

Weblogs are often portrayed as little more than online diaries. But according to Six Apart's Vice President of Business Development Anil Dash, there are enterprise opportunities ahead. In an interview with Executive News Editor Mark Jones, Dash outlined his vision for online publishing and his take on Weblog business models.

InfoWorld: How is Six Apart positioned in the Weblog tools space, particularly as it relates to the enterprise?

Dash: We started creating Weblog tools [as a company] after the [Weblog] format had settled down. [So] not only do we know the space very well, we had the second mover's advantage. The tool that launched the company was Movable Type, which was created really on the basis of correctness, in terms of user experience, code design, architecture, [and] being very modular. There were a lot of decisions made that this was going to be done right, even if that meant a slower ramp-up in creating the product.

InfoWorld: What have other blog tool makers done wrong that brought on that thinking?

Dash: One of the big pieces we wanted to have was a standard scripting language -- PERL being the basis of it -- so that it was very extensible. We have a really robust architecture. We've got probably more developers extending and building on top of the system than any other Weblog tools. On top of that was a very understated but deliberate visual design, because we thought the user experience of a lot of the other tools was trying a little too hard. We did things like implement an API so that there's a range of third-party clients that you can use for authoring.

Since the launch of Movable Type in October 2001, we've got probably more business users than any other Weblog tool, and we've done things like About.com [and] replaced their entire proprietary publishing system with a customized version of Movable Type. Conceptually, the biggest thing we've done is to focus on a tool that lets you write one idea at a time, just like we do in e-mail and instant messaging. The uptake on e-mail and IM was phenomenally fast. Users brought them into the enterprise whether IT wanted it to happen or not, especially with instant messaging. These clients appeared on the desktop even before IS and IT knew how to manage them, how to log them, how to secure them. And we're seeing the same thing with Weblogs. They are so much better than the idea of creating a Web page.

InfoWorld: Regarding About.com, do you think content management is going to be the biggest opportunity for you in the enterprise?

Dash: I think it's about evenly split. So far, we're mostly being used for marketing and communications. There is also a big market right now for business Weblogging. [For example], I think Alan Meckler, CEO of Jupitermedia, had a Weblog and was [using] Movable Type for talking directly to his conference audience. I think that's pretty striking. CEOs have always had some kind of pulpit that they can speak from, but [with a Weblog] it's a little more human a voice.

InfoWorld: In other words, it's a replacement for the corporate intranet?