"Representatives of top personal publishing companies talk about the strengths and weakeness of their applications, as well as discuss where this medium is evolving to in future years." This first-thing-in-the-morning panel features some big guns: Anil Dash (Six Apart), Jason Goldman (Google), Matt Mullenweg (WordPress), Mike B Slone (InkNoise), and blogger Halley Suitt. I'm hoping for fisticuffs or at least some pro-wrestling-style banter. The official listing can be found here. Notes follow...

Round 1... FIGHT!

[Intros]

[Dash]
- LiveJournal is a community mostly for younger folks... MT identified as more advanced [which of course it is]...
- [demos MT, TypePad, LJ] LJ users can control how/whether people read or write what they say...

[Goldman]
- Works on Blogger at Google...
- Focus is to have blogging reach as many people as possible... quick, easy to get into... clear what you will do when you sign up...
- Redesigned comments workflow...

[Slone]
- Founder, creative director of InkNoise...
- Started doing web dev in early 90s, sharing photos with family and friends, doing things with the technology as a developer that otehr people couldn't do...
- Wanted to start a visually-oriented service... easy to use, hosted tool...
- InkNoise is one of the only hosted services to allow storage of rich media
- Looking to build tools that are increasingly usable
- InkNoise v2 is due out soon, will duplicate many features of the other large platforms

[Mullenweg]
- "WordPress is a movement"
- WP is open source, not commercial... it's free...

[moderator asks how many people DON'T have blogs... one person raises their hand]


MOD: Who is your typical user?

[Dash]
- MT is known best... created by and for people who love technolgy for its own sake...
- all templates are customizable... code customizable
- TypePad audience is for the masses... very simple interface... not focussing on the technology... support for things like listing books you're reading, music you're listening to... broad age range... primarily people who don't care much about tweaking HTML...
- LJ is great... broad in age range... the group that gets the most attention is the late high school / early college... introspective community... tighter-knit community...

[Goldman]
- Blogger has always been about sharing what you had to say with an audience of a few... that has guided its development to this day
- Blogger has reached people regardless of demographic or tech knowledge...
- Majority of users are free Blogspot users
- by providing folks a form, they've been able to do amazing things... people are very good at doing things with a white box... after you fill out a few [blog entries] you realize you're writing a history of yourself...

[Slone]
- Audience is for general population without technical expertise... build something that looks good and can be put up quickly... although the root of the code is accessible...
- Moving towards a private label server... partnering with large corporations and communities that already exist...adventure, extreme sports crowd... used to power branded communities... visual themes...
- Two base services... "free ride" and "full stream" [he's straying from the question here]

[Mullenweg]
- Used to use MT
- Initial audience consisted of "pilgrims" [technology pioneers, I suppose]
- [talks about WP being a technical barrier for general audience]
- WordPress "MU" (multiuser)... a streamlined, simplified version of WP, basically just put in a password and user name, and you've got a blog...

MOD: As we see blogging expand and encompass more amateur users, one of the biggest problems is comment and pingback spam... how do your products combat that?

[Dash]
- LJ spam is generally not an issue due to authenticated comments
- TypePad attack-data collected... by the time TP users go to check their site for spam, it's already gone (automated process for detecting and destroying spam)
- MT: concerted attacks... [talks about MT Blacklist]... Will keep evolving responses to spam...
- Huge challenge for installable tools... older versions are vulnerable... Six Apart hadn't previously addressed spam very well...
- blogs set expectation to allow anonymous comments... that is not very realistic [now]... there are professional spammers now...

[Goldman]
- Hosted services have an advantage in the version/update department over installed software
- Looking to share information with other firms to combat spam
- [talks about "no follow"]
- Expectation that users should be able to leave HTML comments [referencing Dash's comments above]
- Authentication restrictions available to curb malicious comments... allow users to easily delete comments... flexibility to turn off comments for a particular post...

[Slone]
- One of the good things about being small is InkNoise doesn't have the spam problems of the bigger services...
- As a hosted service, InkNoise can block spam more easily than installed software
- [talks about user control of comments... deleting... IP-blocking...] Continuing to make new tools to combat spam

[Mullenweg]
- WP had a feature that would filter comments based on keywords...send them to admin for review
- "I am sort of an open source hippy"
- WP now has moderation turned on by default: Emergent Whitelist (automated method to determine friendly posters)... blacklist features...
- As soon as you build a new anti-spam feature, someone finds a way to crack it...
- JavaScript hash/bash is 100% effective against comment spam, but we can't stop Trackback spam...
- WP has integrated XFN (social relationships manager), looks at blogroll/friends, looks to see if they are using WP, blacklists exchanged...
- Eric Meyer wrote a stopgap method to stop spambots with a text-based question/answer...
- wants to work with others to fight spam

[Dash]
- [wants to move people to newest versions of software to stop spam--speaking generally here]
- A big challenge for everyone is to illuminate the dark corners of the web

MOD: The future of blogging... backlash against bloggers... employees getting fired... trade secrets published... negative light on blogging...

[Dash]
- Every medium will go through this [cites email]... very small percentage of bloggers will get fired... people push back against the unfamiliar...
- There is no blogosphere, just a collection of spheres... you have to get outside that... "this can be as varied as people are"
- [wants to see more people make connections with blogs (positive rather than negative)]

[Goldman]
- ebb and flow of how people perceive blogs...
- spread the message that "this is what the web is for"... the idea from the beginning was that anyone could put anything up... in 1994, it wasn't really that because of technical challenges... it took ten years for us to make the web a creative tool... [talks about how the mainstream media don't cover how the web develops as a creative tool, just controversies]
- [anecdote about meeting a new blogger, who asked him why he should blog... Goldman asked him "Who cares about you now" (meaning who knows you who would be interested in what you have to say)]

[Slone]
- Even without 200,000 page-views, someone's blog can still be interesting...
- [talks about how his personal blog caused complete strangers to send him email criticizing his parenting skills]

[Mullenweg]
- Assume your spouse, partner, and boss are reading your blog
- [talks about passwording entries for a private audience... group management in WP... security-management in WP]
- LJ has done an excellent job [protecting personal blog entries]

MOD: What is your hope or dream or wish for the future in terms of blogging?

[Dash]
- More voices
- there are very few bad tools out there
- [talks about how world citizens can gain a voice on the international stage]
- the future is broadening the audience, controlling who is reading your blog...
- 30% of TypePad blogs are passworded
- business side: amazing shift, business-blogs are being held to standards of personal blogs (honesty, transparency)

[Goldman]
- everyone should have a blog, just as everyone has an email address
- build tools and services that allow people to realize the diversity of online voices
- "wealth of voices"
- "Google's mission is to organize the world's information"

[Slone]
- emphasis on sharing... personal technology... expanding InkNoise... social networking...
- InkNoise 2.0 calendar system, compatible with iCal... internal email messaging...

[Mullenweg]
- the goal of every open source project is world domination [joking]
- huge development in plugins... plugin for everything you want to do...
- more media integration... better usability... richer experience for users... we listen to users, wherever you want to go, we will make it happen...