matt mullenweg

WordPress Takes It On the Chin

By Mark Evans in Blogs 10 Comments Tags: , , , , ,

Over the weekend, Robert Scoble had a public (and well warranted) temper tantrum after his WordPress blog was hacked. Not surprisingly, the experience left him upset and digitally vulnerable. But what really disappointed Scoble was WordPress’ casual and, arguably, cavalier, reaction it could have been avoided if he had upgraded to version 2.8.4.

This led to a lively discussion on Friendfeed between Scoble and WordPress domo Matt Mullenweg.

Looking back, WordPress was technically correct in stating that blog users must be diligent by upgrading to avoid any security attacks. There’s a never-ending war going on between software makers and hackers, software makers new to keep counter-attacking.

That said, WordPress dropped the ball by publicly “shrugging its shoulders” with the you should have upgraded message. When your blog has been hacked, the last thing you want to be told is you’ve done something wrong by not upgrading.

From a PR perspective that doesn’t help the situation or make anyone feel any better about things. Instead, many WordPress users wanted to be told what to do, how to fix things, and whether there was anything else they should be worried about such as rogue plug-ins.

If there are lessons to be learned, WordPress has to be more pro-active approach to Web security. If it’s not safe to use versions of WordPress that may only be a few weeks old, then WordPress has to really spread the word – and more than a short message on the WordPress dashboard.

As Elliott Ng suggests, WordPress also needs to create a directory or system that identifies what plug-ins are “safe and which ones are funky”.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m big WordPress fan and user, and respect the work that Mullenweg has done to create and evangelize the technology. But WordPress needs to re-load on how it handles security, and how it deals with its millions of users from a communications and PR perspective.

More: Daring Fireball has some thoughts, including an observation that Movable Type users don’t get penalized for not upgrading, while econsultancy’s Patricio Robles offers some security tips.

(Note: This blog was hacked a couple of weeks ago, apparently by Black Hat SEO hackers. As you can imagine, it spooked me about the security of everything I do online, not just my WordPress blogs.)


Blogger: The Rodney Dangerfield of Blogging

By Mark Evans in Blogs 11 Comments Tags: , , , ,

A post by Louis Gray about the Blogger recently celebrating its 10th anniversary caught my attention for several reasons. One, it’s hard to believe anything on the mainstream anything on the mainstream Web is a decade old until you remember it has been 14 years since Netscape’s IPO, which symbolically marked the official transformation of the Internet into the Web.

While Blogger ranks among the world’s leading blogging platforms, it really doesn’t get the respect it probably deserves. Meanwhile, WordPress basks in the spotlight, although a recent security hack, which I experienced a couple of week ago, is probably not the kind of attention it wants.

Blogger struggles to get its props because, frankly, it is buried deep within Google, which acquired Blogger in 2003 (Twitter’s Ev Williams was one of Blogger’s co-founders). While Google users Blogger for its publicly-facing blogs, Blogger hasn’t really received a lot of love and attention from Google.

Sure, there has been a tweaks here and there, but Blogger is still pretty much the same platform it was six years ago.

Blogger also suffers from not being “cool”. Blogger is regarded as a blogging platform for beginners, who want something simple and easy. And in that respect, it’s a terrific product.

But when people get the hang of it, there’s a perception that anyone serious about blogging needs to migrate to WordPress – sort of like trading in your tricycle for a bicycle.

No doubt, WordPress has done a fantastic job positioning itself as the blogging platform. Matt Mullenweg, WordPress’ founding developer, is a tireless evangelist who travels the world talking to disciples. And the WordPress platform is enthusiastically supported by thousands of third-party developers who happily create plug-ins that expand and enhance the platform.

But when you look at the numbers, Blogger is doing pretty well. Below is a chart comparing unique visitors (U.S.) for Blogger to WordPress.com. Blogger is leading, although WordPress’ numbers don’t include the millions of people who have self-hosted WordPress blogs.

Still, it is interesting to see how the number of unique visitors to Blogger has grow 25% over the past year at a time when blogging seems have lost some of its luster.

Do you use Blogger? If so, why haven’t you climbed aboard the WordPress bandwagon?


A Future With Dead URL Links?

By Mark Evans in Social Media 5 Comments Tags: , , ,

In announcing the launch of wp.me, a new URL shortening service for wordpress.com hosted sites, Matt Mullenweg stated the much-need obvious about the increasingly competitive market.

“While URL shorteners have had some incredible usage tied to the growth (and constraints) of Twitter, I question their sustainability as a business. This point was underscored a few days ago when a popular one, tr.im, announced they were going to shut down at the end of the year.”

As I mentioned in a recent post, the URL-shortening business doesn’t have a business model yet. Sure, there’s lots of talk about analytics and a news service but no one has shown they can make money from offering a URL-shortening service.

To date, all the URL-shortening business has demonstrated is that the barriers to entry must be fairly low given the number of players – tinyurl.com, bit.ly, cli.gs, tr.im, et al.

To date, the only viable service is tinyurl.com, a one-man operation (Kevin Gilbertson).

Among the new players, bit.ly has the most potential to be worth anything given it has raised some venture capital, and it was selected by Twitter to be its default URL-shortener, which makes you think that one day Twitter might use some of its VC dough to acquire bit.ly.

In the meantime, the biggest risk – and one that few people talk about – is what happens to all those shortened links when many of theses URL-shortening services go out of business.

Are we talking about a world with millions of dead links? Perhaps that’s an opportunity someone should consider, offering a premium service to revive dead links. (I’m being half-serious!)

More: Search Engine Land has a great overview of the URL-shortening services out there.


Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...