I was on a brief jog around the internet this morning, and ran across a service called Weblogs Work — apparently they are a weblog hosting/consulting company. My first impressions aren’t very good, considering it’s borked in my main browser (Safari) and the sidebar looks strangely similar to Odeo.com, but first impressions aren’t everything. Yeah, they are. Anyway.
The pricing page has a few different levels of service, starting from a beginning “we start it and host it” to the bigtime “we start it, host it, and tell you fancy shit about the weblog world to make it sound like you’re spending money wisely.” Here are some things that bother me about the pricing schemes:
- They turned the word “blog” into a marketing device by capitalizing it wherever it’s used. Go to the other pages on that site, and you’ll see the same thing. Do us a favor and stop trying to sound more self-important by using BLOG®©™ for the sole purpose of making your services sound more flashy.
- They don’t really care about design. I hate when a “weblog consulting firm” puts out cookie-cutter, template-inspired weblog designs and then slaps the company logo at the top and calls it “branded.” I want designers designing my website, not marketing or business people.
- Under “Corporate BLOG” *cringe* they list this as something they do: Consultation period to establish stakeholder criteria and build internal concensus [sic]. Consensus about what? This is probably the worst line of marketing mumbo jumbo I’ve ever heard. Well it was, until I read the rest of the “Corporate BLOG” features. Every single one sounds like they’re just trying to milk money from people who have no idea what RSS or weblogs are.
I don’t normally go off like this, but my professional pet peeve is when companies make weblogs out to be magical silver bullets that will automatically make you more money and appear cooler to your customers. When people who don’t “get” weblogs try to bill them as huge marketing ploys, this happens. Weblogs are a means to make your company more honest and transparent, and if you fake it, then readers will call bullshit on you and let you hear it.
Sorry Weblogs Work, I won’t be shelling out $2,500 a month for you to do any “pro-active coordination of weblog with internal corporate activities” or give me “ongoing monitoring of key issues within blogosphere including ‘early warning’” because I don’t even know what you’re talking about.
About Mike Rundle
Hi Mike. Thanks for the words on Weblogs Work. We do have a quick templated site as a placeholder. Our new site, designed by Dan Cederholm at Simplebits.com, launches Monday. The whole service offer/pricing/lingo is new as well. Perhaps you’ll come by and check it out.
Also, we are in complete agreement that blogging isn’t some type of fairy dust for your company. It will do exactly squat if you’re not in it for the long haul. But what it *does* do that is nice is force a more open strategic stance in communications. If you use the tool, you’re choosing a different way to interact with the people that matter to you. We think there is tremendous value in that, and so do the clients we’re working with.
Just a quick note about the template that’s Blix for WordPress and it’s designed by the great sebastian, over at kingcosmonaut.de, very nice guy, very pro designer, doubt that’s the intention, dunno why you’re saying it’s a rip off.
Hey, I just call it how I see it.
It’s the same exact color green, they both have two rounded corners (top left, bottom right), the hover state is a light color that encompasses the entire height of the link, and they both have small icons that aren’t included in the hover state.
Whichever came first, that’s the original. Maybe it was inspiration, but regardless, they look very similar and have the same style cues. Maybe Dan would like to comment?
If memory serves, Dan created the Odeo site for Evan Williams. Dan also did some of the Blogger templates. Sebastian did the Blix theme for Word Press (the one used as a placeholder by Weblogs Work). Ironically Dan did the new design of the Weblogs Work’s site. The one clear thing? Dan is one of the most prolific designers talked about on Businesslogs! :)
Crazy coincidences! I’m sure it wasn’t intentional. I’ll update the post.
The “BASF of the Internet”, indeed.
Apparently “The on-time fee covers planning, training and design.” What does a late fee cover? ;-)
Most people that provide WordPress services for pay donate 5-15% back to the project, which makes sense because the better WordPress becomes the more valuable what they’re selling is. I wonder if these folks, with their extremely high prices, would do the same?
That’s a great point, Matt. I think the WeblogsWork guys are reading this thread, so hopefully they can comment on that idea.
Sorry if my comment came out harsh, it’s just that Sebastian is a buddy and not a hack :).
About the money thing, that is a good point actually.
Hi,
hmm to be frank I find this whole blog scene as hype, i mean why there is any need to manage blog all the time by 3rd person? Get 1 gig space on shared server, pay $10 a month, pay $10 extra a month if you want hosting company to manage blogging software…get the site designed for some $500 dollars…
That’s all…and start posting without worrying about the security issues haha…
Deep-
Lots of companies don’t know how to manage a weblog, let alone write for one. The difficulties encountered are usually political issues — where the marketing department thinks that a weblog is just another way to trick customers into purchasing something, while the actual goal for a weblog is to introduce transparent communication into the mix.
We’ve seen companies start public-facing weblogs without consultants and fail, but we’ve also seen some succeed. It greatly depends on the mentality your company holds before jumping into the weblog world, but it also depends on their willingness to embrace the medium and be truthful and honest in their writing.
“Get the site designed for some $500 dollars”
Hmm, that sounds like a page right out of the Weblogs, Inc. playbook ……. ZING!
oh ok, Now i got the point, to be frank I was in impression that it just deals with installing, hosting and managing it..(security issues etc..)
I had no idea about the things beyond that….thanks for info :)
Regards
Deep
Mike, Matt: I think that’s a great idea. Weblogs Work and Business Logs *should* get together and support WordPress and the development of great online tools for open communication. As we get underway & grow, I’ll be eager to work with other folks to come up with some creative ways we can reward & drive innovative development.
Part of what we are doing is developing little Web 2.0 tools we want to use ourselves. We created elfURL (http://www.elfURL.com) as slightly better way to do manageable URLs. We have a number of other projects in our skunkworks as well, and we’ll be announcing them as soon as we think they are ready for you all to play with.
The new marketing strategy of the blogworld…build yourself up by knocking everyone else down.
Lame.
Hey Clint – I’m not sure if you read our weblog much, but we try to be as honest and forthright as possible and don’t like to hold punches, especially when talking about important people/companies/events within our industry.
Basically we call bullshit when we see it and have been doing this since day one. From the About page on your website it shows you’ve only been in the industry for a few years, I remember when I was newer in the design/web world I was definitely more altruistic than I am now. I guess work has tainted my view of the profession a bit ;)
Thanks for the comment and best of luck at IIT — it’s a great school.