The "Google Home"
may not look like this building, but they sure have enough assets to build an even bigger and better one! Google's recent profits topped expectations, but this is in contrast to the privately held SixApart who owns the blogging software that I do this blog on, TypePad. If you look at what they charge per year for TypePad's services, you can discern that their profits don't come anywhere near to Google's (even with a potential million customers). What they have in common is that they both help bring buyers and sellers together, in my opinion.
I actually visited SixApart's home office in San Francisco in August, 2005. It was nice with a downtown "brick and open ceiling" look. However, I'm sure that SixApart has not had the advertising profit that Google has had. My point is that if you read SixApart's history, you'll see they've come a long way since the Fall of 2001. Their growth has accelerated in the last year, and to quote one of the founder's "we see activity on the service-both reading & writing-that equals services with 100 times the number of users on TypePad."
"Growing Pains" can have many symptoms and causes for a fast growing, relatively young company. For SixApart their recent blog service growth challenges have caused Duncan Riley (who I usually agree with) of The Blog Herald, to be critical of SixApart's situation. His 10/27/05 post entitled "SixApart admit greed causing TypePad outages" equates "greed" with the company overextending itself? Luckily Jay Allen commented well in disagreement. On 10/30/05 Duncan's post "Will SixApart be sued over TypePad failures" stirs his intended (in my opinion) controversy about SixApart. A short comment from LSF on this says it all for me.
But frankly, I had very little "failures" with my almost daily posting in TypePad. In fact, I was surprised to get the explanatory SixApart e-mail from their CEO. But, I did think it was GREAT, as SixApart is dealing with these issues in an Open and Honest way. My only constructive comment is that they should have been more Upfront about it, but they may have been understaffed and spread too thin. Their priorities were probably more "analyze and correct" than communicate with their customers, at first. In fact, on another of Duncan's posts, Stephan, a commenter, posted the SixApart CEO's great response to him about compensating the customers who were seriously affected.
As an " intermediary" I can understand both sides of this story. But, my main concern is that some TypePad customers will want more than they deserve in compensation. This can happen in a "lynch mob" mentality environment where opportunists get greedy. On the other hand, if bloggers can prove they lost money, they should be compensated fairly. However, this process could prove time consuming and costly in and of itself. My second concern is that as SixApart's openness and honesty allows opportunists to try to get greedy, if they succeed too well, it may stop other companies from being open and honest about their shortcomings. Maybe if SixApart does an IPO, they can afford to have the "Google Home", and satisfy all customers (even the ones who don't deserve it - just kidding!).
Cartoon courtesy of "Microdoc News" (out of business) by way of Google Blogoscoped.
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