SixApart's Anil Dash Annnounces WordPress Plugins At WordCamp MidAtlantic

TechCrunch has a piece on it: Not A Typo: Six Apart Opens Up Suite Of Products For Rival WordPress about Anil Dash's announcement at Saturday's WordCamp Mid-Atlantic that Sixapart has developed a plugin for WordPress users, as well as a 'whole bunch of powerful services available to WordPress users".( see SixAparts dedicated WordPress page.).  Anil Dash, co-founder of SixApart, delivered a very captivating keynote at WordCamp Mid-Atlantic concerning social media, why we blog, and connecting across the social web.

The features include:

• TypePad Anti-spam
• TypePad Connect
• SixApart Media integration
• Blogs.com directory inclusion

Dash says that this move represents “baby steps” in Six Apart’s tentative first efforts to provide a suite of features and functionality to WordPress users. This a big deal, considering the long standing rivalry between the two blogging platforms. Last year, the two companies had a heated duel via company blog posts, Twitter  and in TechCrunch comments.

In fact, TypePad Anti-spam has been included in the WordPress Plugin Directory since 2008 and, as of this date, has had 456 downloads, according to the Stats. WordPress is an open service, with and Open API that anyone can develop for.

Here is the video of Anil Dash talking about WordPress plugins and blogging:

WordPress founder, Matt Mullenweg, joined the conversation at TechCrunch, pointing out that TypePad users still have considerable difficulty exporting their blog from TypePad to WordPress, a legitimate point that has been previously discussed by other WordPress users.  However, the announcement was not about the ability to export between platforms, but rather services and plugins that SixApart has to offer to the WordPress community.

It's very difficult to have a conversation about SixApart (Movable Type, TypePad and Vox) and WordPress without it digressing into a "battle of the blog platform" war chat.  It is hard to get past the fierce rivalry, fueled by fierce user loyalty on either side of the fence.

However, if you take some time to listen to Anil's keynote at WordCamp MidAtlantic, it may not seem quite as contentious as the rivalry watchers would like:

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Part Four:

(Videos found via Insight Keynote)

Sashi Bellamkonda, of Network Solutions, posted his interview with Anil Dash on the Network Solutions blog:

The audience at Word Camp Mid-Atlantic drew a deep breath as Anil Dash, one of the co-founders of Six Apart a rival blogging platform delivered the keynote address. During the keynote he made a very sensational announcement. The screen lit up with a URL http://www.sixapart.com/wordpress which is like Microsoft having a place for Apple software on their website.

What Anil announced was that Six Apart is introducing plug-ins that word press and other blogging platform users can use TypePad AntiSpam, Six Apart Media, TypePad Connect, Blogs.com.

They are open source and FREE.

The other unconventional part of this announcement is that Six Apart decided to use a very grassroots Word Press event to make this sensational announcement instead of calling the New York Times, Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal. I took the opportunity to catch up with Anil Dash and interviewed him for this blog.

Matt Mullenweg also pointed out, as I have above, that "Everyone is welcome to develop for WordPress, and offering services has always gone both ways. The first non-WordPress plugin for Akismet 4 years ago was for MT, and our other services PollDaddy, IntenseDebate, and Gravatar are also used on MT and Typepad. Conversely, the Typepad Antispam plugin is in our directory"