Five Years of Movable Type

Of course, most of the time, when people look back at a product, they say something like “it came from humble beginnings…” In our case, it came from downright self-deprecating beginnings:

We’ve never claimed to be the best. We’ve never presented Movable Type as the program that will revolutionize weblogging. We’re just developing a system with a lot of the features that we’ve heard users are looking for.

Despite being modest about their goals, those of us who started using the platform that Ben and Mena made realized that it did revolutionize blogging. In 2001, it was uncommon for blogs to have what are now basics like comments or categories — and TrackBack wasn’t even invented for another 6 months. Movable Type continues to lead the way today as a platform that can easily publish an unlimited number of blogs that can be managed in one powerful interface. And while Movable Type didn’t invent blog APIs or feeds, it was among the first widely-deployed platforms to support them and help popularize them.

But the impact of Movable Type is much larger than our little company making a piece of software. What’s been amazing is what people have done with the platform. Movable Type users have shown the world what blogging can be, using a professional-grade tool to create many of the best blogs in the world, from multi-million-dollar blogging networks to internal blogging systems to popular niche blogs that let their creators quit their day jobs to focus on the things that they’re really enthusiastic about. There are even dozens of people around the world who make a living customizing Movable Type, by creating plugins or designs, or by consulting or configuring the platform so others can get started blogging.

We’ve evolved tremendously in the past five years, of course. The software has changed, blogging has changed, and all of us at Six Apart have changed. But we wanted to take a few moments to note the anniversary before we start exploring some of the lessons we’ve learned, and more importantly, where Movable Type is going next. Thanks for supporting us every step of the way.