I won’t quote any of Shelley’s post on how the other half blogs.
I’m not sure I feel as strongly as she does, since my attention was drawn to a different point. I do agree that the blogerati, if I can use so meaningless a neologism, seem to take themselves a little too seriously. Dave Winer says those of us who object to SixApart’s new licensing agreement are just cheapskates: he pays more for taxi rides and dinners than 6A expects for their license. Doesn’t everyone live like that?
I mentioned a disconnect between the management of SixApart and the rest of us (the poor saps who have “movabletype” in our URL structure or display their badge on our pages), but apparently the precious social scientists think we’re all a bunch of brats who’ve had their candy snatched away.
But the part that caught my eye was this:
Does that sound like someone who feels invested in the decision about what he uses? Or is publishing software like electricity, a utility under the control of technicians, and as long as it works, he has no opinion about it?
Reading his comments, he comes close to understanding the issue but just can’t get there: he touched on the emotional investment that MT users have made but he can’t relate to it. He’s not engaged, because he’s removed from the decisions that the rest of us have to make. So we’re brats working out of our basements and he’s an acclaimed social scientist with a pocketful of frequent flyer miles.
Thinking over Shelley’s piece, I think it could be a good thing for people to re-examine their decisions about the tools they use: I’m not the only one chafing under MovableType’s performance limitations, and this could be the weblog phenomenon’s “let a thousand flowers bloom” moment. If SixApart loses the chance to lock in the market, that’s their problem.
If Clay had taken up the issue of trust between a vendor and its users and the low switching costs of the tools, he might have had something insightful to add to the conversation. But all he could come up with to equate this to complaints about the weather.
Speaking of switching costs, perhaps it’s time to evaluate the presence of Many to Many in my aggregator.