Toni Schneider is announcing the launch of the Automattic Support Network for enterprise-grade support of WordPress and WordPress MU.
Says Toni:
WordPress is already used to power blogs and sites by several well known large companies, places like the New York Times, CNET, and About.com. In talking to other large corporate users over the past few months, I’ve received the same request over and over: if we could pay you to provide us with enterprise level support for WordPress, we’re ready to deploy it in a big way. We’ve responded by creating the Support Network. It’s loosely modelled after similar offerings from companies like MySQL and Red Hat who provide support subscriptions for open source software.
WordPress is our primary platform, and we’ve been talking with Matt & Toni about serving as one of their recommended professional service providers for integration, development, marketing support and other types of professional services that are adjuncts to the core platform support Automattic will focus on. We are also moving ahead on integrating white-label versions of some of the Big in Japan apps (PodServe, primarily), which we think are an ideal complement to extensible platforms like WordPress.
Check out what the Support Network has to offer.
Update:Â Marshall weighs in at TechCrunch.
Posted by admin | June 26, 2006 - 11:52am | 8 Comments
Category: Uncategorized | Tags: automattic, corporateblogging, enterprise, photomatt, Social Media, supportnetwork, tonischneider, WordPress, wordpressmu
One of the questions I get all the time is how to measure ROI for social media. (A better question is how do we value return on attention, but, let’s bracket that.) Naturally, you want to know if this stuff is helping you achieve your business objectives. As Hugh correctly points out, blogging’s impact is mostly indirect. And it’s also a long-haul thing. You have to stick with it to build your tribe. Some of the metrics we look at are readership, feed subscribers, comments, links, inquiries, leads, partners and so on.
That said, sometimes the gains are so immediate and direct you sort of get slapped in the face. Exhibit A: the blog for the as-yet-unreleased open source ticketing system called SimpleTicket. SimpleTicket was developed by Architel, who started blogging about it on their own site. Soon, they were getting so many inquiries for the code & questions about the project, that they needed to launch a blog just to more efficiently communicate with this growing community. So, we put together another WordPress-driven site for SimpleTicket, and they started blogging the project progress there.
Results to date:
- A new crackerjack employee for Architel, who found them (and thought they were cool) because of SimpleTicket
- Over $75,000 in annual billings from new clients who hired Architel after discovering them through SimpleTicket
- Immediate improvements to the base code for the project; questions answered
- An international group of beta testers ready for the code release on the 28th
Again, the impact of blogging & social media is often indirect, but these are some pretty good results for a blog that is just a few weeks old.
Technorati Tags: architel, hugh+macleod, simpleticket
Posted by admin | January 25, 2006 - 1:30pm | No Comments
Category: Uncategorized | Tags: Corporate Blogging, Social Media, Uncategorized, WordPress
I get this question a lot, ‘what is a trackback?’ Wikipedia says, ‘a TrackBack is a mechanism used in a blog to show, around an entry, a list of other blogs that refer to it.’ They continue:
The term TrackBack was introduced by Six Apart which introduced a mechanism in their blogging server, Movable Type, that works by sending a ‘ping‘ between the blogs, and therefore providing the alert. The blog receiving the ping typically displays the TrackBack information below a blog entry. This usually includes a summary of what has been written on the target blog, together with a URL and the name of the blog. The Referer field in the HTTP protocol was originally intended as a means of supporting features similar to those TrackBack offers.
Tom Coates has answered the question here. Another beginner’s guide can be found here. The official specification can be found here. Trackback issues relative to WordPress can be found here. Good luck!
Posted by admin | December 14, 2005 - 9:59pm | No Comments
Category: Uncategorized | Tags: Corporate Blogging, Social Media, Web 2.0, Weblogs Work, WordPress
The Architel corporate web/blog site has been launched. The open source WordPress architecture allows the company to launch the site and make continious changes to it over time. So you can never say a site is ‘done.’ Kudos go to Dan Cederholm from SimpleBits for the xhtml/css design (as well as the new Architel logo). Weblogs Work integrated the xhtml/css into WordPress (actually three WordPress installs).
Architel is a boutique IT support company located in Dallas, Texas that supports small businesses (20-100) employees. Their unique IT service delivery model (one flat-monthly-fee for all-you-can-eat support) aligns the interests of the small business owner and Architel. The company was a pioneer in this space and is now a pioneer in the ‘blog as corporate website’ meme. Here are screenshots or just visit the site yourself here @ architel.com.
The site was entered in the website design contest at SXSW conference and we are crossing our fingers that the judges will enjoy the tight integration between the blog CMS and Dan’s xhtml and css. What do you think about our work?
Posted by admin | December 4, 2005 - 3:22pm | 2 Comments
Category: Uncategorized | Tags: Corporate Blogging, Dallas, Managed Blogging, Media 2.0, Memes, Micromarketing, New PR, Social Media, Startup, Web 2.0, Weblogs Work, WordPress
Josh Hallett (I really enjoy his blog, this is the second post in a row I have blogged about) posted an interesting post about tagging. His point? The truth is, it difficult for novices (who barely understand the concept of tagging) to tag their posts in TypePad or Blogger. Obviously, WordPress and Movable Type make it easy as pie to tag (we typically launch client blogs on WordPress). Why tag? Here is Josh’s thought:
"I know that tagging my posts has led to increased traffic from Technorati and other search tools that support tags. Granted it is very easy for me include them in my posts."
Posted by amuse | September 30, 2005 - 9:16am | 2 Comments
Category: Uncategorized | Tags: Corporate Blogging, Managed Blogging, Social Media, Web 2.0, Weblogs Work, WordPress
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