Is TypePad the Wrong Tool for Business Bloggers?

As many active bloggers out there know, TypePad has been paaaaaaaainfully slow lately. If you have a TypePad account, posting has been somewhere between difficult and impossible.

Over at Business Blog Consulting (the other BBC), behind the locked doors of our Yahoo Group, there's been a lot of chatter about leaving TypePad for greener pastures.

Debbie Weil, over at BlogWrite for CEO's and a fellow BBC blogger, takes TypePad to task with her post Listen Up SixApart: some of your TypePad customers may switch. Because Debbie's, well Debbie Weil, Anil Dash from Six Apart actually responded on her blog.

I know that other BBC contributors plan on posting their own thoughts both to BBC and to their own blogs in the next 24 hours, and as I get a list of those posts I'll update this post.

For me, this reminds me of the mid-90's when AOL's email went down for about two days. People lost it. Businesses claimed they were being ruined. Congress held hearings on what could be done. And Steve Case said something to the effect that it showed how important AOL was to American Business. (At least that's how I remember it.)

I believe the lesson business owners learned from that is that whatever your communication medium is, it needs to be rock-solid. Piggy-backing your communications on a consumer product like AOL is no way to run a real business.

Until recently I recommended TypePad as a platform for business bloggers...especially compared to Blogger, which doesn't have half the bells and whistles TypePad offers. However, as more businesses turn to blogging as a legitimate marketing tool they are going to expect enterprise-level solutions...not "waiting on TypePad.com" messages.

The recent problems with TypePad and slowdowns at Technorati show that blogging is growing at a mind-boggling rate; businesses will continue to flock to it, and so will dollars. Whether TypePad is going to be part of the solution for business bloggers or an also-ran will be determined by how they respond to their current problems.

Technorati tags: TypePad

Rich Brooks
TypePad User...For Now

Comments

[Bina]

Have you ever tried w.Bloggar (http://www.wbloggar.com/)? It's a free software that allows you to write your posts offline, among many other things. It supports TypePad.I don't have a TypePad account, so have never tried it with TypePad. It may help speed things up.

[Anil Dash]

Rich, thanks for the feedback. We're really committed to making sure TypePad does meet the expectations that you (and we) have for the service. Our co-founders have just posted an update on what's been going on, and I hope that gives some more background that you find useful. We're going to solve these problems, and I hope you'll give us the chance to get it right.

Check out the update here:
http://www.sixapart.com/about/corner/2005/10/the_ups_downs_o.html

[Jason]

Just getting started blogging. Installed WordPress on my own server however I'm not sure that's the best to use. I know you talk about typepad, is it better? From a Business prospective do you think it's better to have your blog on a hosted solution like blogger?

[Rich Brooks]

Jason,

Good question; I'm just getting started on WordPress myself, so I don't have enough experience to tell you that it's the right blogging tool for business. However, some of my fellow bloggers over at the Business Blog Consulting blog (http://www.businessblogconsulting.com) are loyal users and say that it's the best platform for blogging.

TypePad is very user-friendly AND powerful, which is one reason why so many companies choose it. From what I've heard, WordPress isn't quite as slick looking, but has more versatility. Again, just going on word-of-mouth here.