Koo’s Corner

Typically, this is the time I start most of my blogs (10-11pm), but tonight is a little different. Tomorrow I don’t have work, hence I am not fretting being tired after writing this blog and taking care of some other pressing items.

Why do not I have work? Because next week I start my new job at Yardbarker.com and last Friday was my last day at SugarCRM. With one week of freedom sandwiched in between, I am tentatively calling this next week Summer of Ben (Seinfeld reference)

Video of Baron Davis on Yardbarker talking about his Yardbarker blog

Anyways wanted to share some interesting tidbits on my new gig.

It was two weeks back, I was faced with the question PC or Mac for my new computer. Although my desktop at home is Mac and my phone is an Iphone, my work computer has always been a PC.

Hmmmm. Could I fully adopt Macs, despite years of doing all work functions on the PC? I wrestled with this decision for about 2 seconds before I replied back requesting a Mac. I am sure there will be a couple of bumps in the road, but for now I must say I am ecstatic that today I became the new user of a Macbook.

In other news, today I was discussing various blogging platforms in a informal meeting when I was told wordpress.com hosted blogs do not allow advertisements on them. This was news to me, and unfortunately my blog is hosted by wordpress.com.

Recently someone inquired about selling ads on my blog, something I was looking to do very soon. The Wordpress.com/Automatic policy is known, but is not exactly advertised during the sign up process.

While a majority of wordpress users may not want to place advertisements on their blogs, the option to do so would enable the minority of bloggers the ability to make some extra cash. Wordpress is such a great tool with such a large community, there has to be hundreds of thousands of users who find themselves locked out of using advertising tools despite an interest to do so.

Matt Mullenweg and Toni Schneider have both indicated that this issue maybe revisited and I sincerely hope they see the light. Blogs and new media in general are steadily gaining traction in the mainstream as viable media outlets. Not having advertising enabled, will cost Automatic/Wordpress.com a large contingent of users who hope to augment their income with advertising revenue. I know I might be going out on a limb here, but I am pretty sure bloggers are people too…. and people typically like money.

I hope there is movement soon on this front, as every day I go without advertisements is another day that I am postponing retirement. One can wish.

A lot of my friends and family have been impressed by how mature and robust benkoo.com is. This is kind of a back handed compliment as I possess no web design, web development, or html/php coding skills. I really cannot take that much credit as my blogging software, wordpress, does all the heavy lifting.

Wordpress is an open source blogging software solution that has quickly developed into one of the most popular and functional blogging solutions out there (partly due to the fact its open source).

However since Wordpress was initially an open source project and not actual commercialized product, early adopters of it were very tech savvy users who were well versed in web hosting and the value of open source.

In 2005, Matthew Mullenweg started Automatic, in hopes of bringing Wordpress to the masses. At the core of their business was wordpress.com, a web property devoted to selling web hosted version of the popular wordpress software. This is a great breakdown of the difference between hosted vs on site and wordpress.com vs wordpress.org for those unfamiliar with these concepts.

2 of the biggest issues surrounding the many emerging open source companies are

1) developing a business model and concept around an open source solution ( not that easy at all)

2) the potential losing of support from the open source community that has painstakingly been a part of the development, testing, and evangelizing of the product but now must watch as a business entity tries to perpetuate its adoption while also trying to reach profitability

Although not an expert on the workings of Automatic and wordpress.com I would say that they have done a great job in succeeding in dealing with both issues (enough to warrant a $200 million acquisition bid and turn it down) Below an except from Automatic’s founders blog

“Fast forward to 2007: many of the seeds planted started to really bloom. On WordPress.com 1.8 million new users joined, they created 25 million posts, we served 3.2 billion dynamic pageviews, and grew to reach over 100 million unique users worldwide. Akismet blocked billions of spams from reaching blogs. Nearly every major media organization, from the NY Times, WSJ, CNN, Fox, Time, People, and more, have embraced WordPress”

Why the above except is impressive, its even more impressive given that Automatic does not have any office space, did this all utilizing only $1.1 million in initial funding, and small employee base (20 or so) is scattered all over the world (although the Bay Area is heavily represented).

So moving past the wordpress history lesson and overview, the young company has made recent news with 2 big developments.

1) Automatic/Wordpress.com recently received $29.5 million in funding from previous investors in addition to

2) Wordpress.com users now have 3GB of space for their blogs compared to 50 MB (60x more)

The new funding will allow Wordpress.com more resources grow their operations and perhaps a corporate office may even be in the works. More importantly for customers, the extra space will give bloggers the space needed to store the photos, videos, and documents that would have too large for the 50mb storage quota.

I was close to giving in and buying more storage before the increase as I was quickly reaching capacity. Now its a non issue. The 50 MB would have limited me to about 20 or so pictures like the ones below I took in New Orleans. The new 3GB will allow me to store around 1200.

Its great to see Automatic/Wordpress.com gaining momentum, adding value to their product, as well as doing a great job commercializing a terrific open source product.

Its also positive to see the New York Times taking on a more friendly stance on new media. As a novice new media proponent, open source enthusiast, and rookie blogger I must say its good news all the way around.