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Federated Media Lands WordPress.com Deal
tekgoblin writes "Federated Media has just announced a partnership with WordPress.com. This deal follows shortly after Federated Media acquired the advertising network Lijit. The deal will include all of the blogs that are hosted under the company which comes to around 25 million. WordPress.com users will now be able to choose to allow sponsored posts, and Federated Media ads on their blog."
Now watch the non-ad non-hosted version of WordPress begin to suck.
Further blurring the lines between paid advertising and legitimate content. This'll make snydeq's slashvertisements here for Info World look like highway billboards by comparison.
It's not precisely a household term ...
Really? Really?! An advertizing conglomerate naming themselves, "Lijit?!"
The simulation is slipping - any matrix-style super-reality engineers out there, you really should tighten this down. It's becoming WAY too obvious this is a wicked parody of some other reality!
Ryan Fenton
and not about quality software. Anybody remember http://tech.slashdot.org/story/05/03/31/196220/wordpress-banned-by-google-for-spamming
Just what we need - more digital effluent, annoyances, corporate propaganda, half-truths, logical fallacies, and appeals to consumerism.
How about working on a way to tip authors without sharing enough information to get stuck on a spam mailing list? We don't have a viable micropayment system which transfers funds without transferring personal information to potential abusers.
Innovate something, instead of lowering the SnR even further.
What does that even mean? Brands are trademarks. Curation is what museum researchers (curators) do. How can a trademark pull a museum researcher? Is this English? Can someone explain?
Uh... no offense... but WP pretty much vacuums in lots of ways already. Just that it's targeted to a market so ignorant that it won't notice. Sorta like Windoze.
C'mon guys - obviously this is totally Lijit.
#DeleteChrome
Oh, you offering a better solution? Something that is as easy to extend, opensource, very well documented and supported by millions?
Before you get on a high horse calling the code a spagetti mess, this is only a first appearance. The code is to make it insanely flexible for all users.
WordCamps, Infante plugins, Support forms that are community supported, the largest share of all deployed CMS. If it was something for ignorant people that didn't know any better then tell be a better solution?
What do you suggest as an alternative CMS/Blogging system. I've recently taken over the web presence for a non-profit, and we are currently wordpress-based, though I'm in the process of completely revamping the site.
So far I really have come to like it, despite the fact that its PHP-based. Its easy enough to customize, once you buy-in to their design patterns, and it allows me to do a lot of the heavy lifting to get the site ready, while leaving the press and content writers perfectly capable of doing their jobs without needing/bothering me. Its easy to install and has lots of available plugins. And it makes it easy to use primarily as a CMS with the blog-like component active but in the background. Once I got past my own NIH symptom of wanting to build a custom framework, its treated me quite well.
Of course I am only an amateur, so I guess I may be part of the 'ignorant' market its intended for.
Well... at the threat of drawing the usual ire of developers here, I might suggest you read:
http://www.chapterthree.com/blog/jennifer-lampton/wordpress-vs-drupal-saga-continues
though of course there are lots of other 'frameworks' such as RoR, Symfony etc that one might also make comparisons to.
The two main things in the above:
WP lacks a developed permissions system. In the end, I've seen this lead to serious conflicts-- people want perms because module X requires them to be superadmin to do Y, then, they use those perms to create havoc (delete others content, for instance).
An unreviewed plugins system, especially in the theme layer. It's common enough that an organization chooses a theme based on 'look', which has serious obfuscated errors or worse (virus distribution or vulnerabilities) in the code.
Something like Drupal is a larger commitment, in terms of learning and resources, and not without its negatives (documentation, consistency etc all have serious issues at this point--- but those problems are worse in WP); but in the long term, it gives you the ability to do a lot more, and its a lot more standardized in the way it does those things.
Or to quote most of the firms I know in our metro: we just won't take on WP projects (again). It might seem attractive if you were coming from the DIY impuse, but once you've used a more developed framework, it just looks like a lot of very, very inconsistent hackery with a smooth admin backend.
FWIW; I can't really address a specific non-profit's situation, without a lot more details about it, and (some) non-profits tend to be resource-poor.
Drupal can suck my ass and have a feast on whatever comes out.
And, what "metro" is that? Also, can you be more specific on what you mean by "more" when you say that Drupal "...gives you the ability to do a lot more..." than WordPress?
Oh, the trials and tribulations of a network geek! Read about them at: http://www.ryumaou.com/hoffman/netgeek/
I worked with Drupal for two years, then this past year switched to building anything new in WordPress. It's easier for both developers and clients. It's easier to write plugins, easier to build templates, and just feels way more organized and coherent.
Even disregarding the fact most clients have used WordPress before, it's still easier for them because instead of logging in to Drupal and being faced with a thousand different options and, in 6 and earlier, content creation and content management being in two different locations for some bizarre reason, they just have a few things they're actually interested in seeing and all the boring stuff is tucked away under "settings" or can be very easily removed during development without any hacks.
In terms of using a framework like Symfony, Rails, etc, obviously they're better for clients that have big budgets and/or are extremely demanding about exact details of how something looks/functions. However, nearly anything you want to do requires more planning (on both the client, who has to know exactly what features they want and how it should work) and more implementation time (generally writing a feature from scratch instead of installing and tweaking a plugin). So in the end... nobody wants to waste money, and even big clients generally prefer "we can install this plugin and tweak it to look nice on your site for about $300" as opposed to "it will take $8000 and a three weeks to build that feature into your site and admin"