The blogging platforms of the web have always shown a keen sense of competition, this with their legion of followers and supporters stretch across the length and breadth of the world wide web. In this game of sorts WordPress and Six Apart (which owns Movable Type and Typepad platforms) have been at the forefront of bitter online battles.
The one up manship were taken to new heights especially after WordPress’s major 2.5 version release. However, recent news suggest that the competitors might at last be looking at making peace with each other.
Six Apart, announced last week that it has launched a plugin that provides WordPress users with access to a suite of Six Apart’s add-on features for blogs. This means WordPress user now just need to install a free plugin on their blog to access some of Typepad’s custom tools. The features are as follows:
- TypePad AntiSpam
- TypePad Connect
- Integration with Six Apart Media (Their Ad Network)
- Inclusion with Blogs.com (blog directory that they launched last year)
The move perhaps is to introduce some of Typepad’s products to the world of WordPress users, many of whom might never have looked beyond WordPress for a solution. This can be an opening with which they can try and persuade people to try and check Typepad as a platform later. Also, the fact is that in terms of users WordPress has a higher number, there fore services like Blogs.com and Six Apart Media, can do well with the influx this move will bring to their numbers. It would mean more blogs in their network and directory which is essential for any such service to scale and grow.
In another news, WordPress announced the Beta release of WordPress 2.8. WP has been scouting for opinions and ideas on how to scale the platform better in the new version through its community. And with the recent release of Buddypress to go along with the email feature at WordPress.com, this has probably been a busy summer (or is it spring there?) for the guys at Automattic. The huge feature list of potentially trivial upgrades is available at http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_2.8.
