It’s been a long time since the blog platform I have been using for the last
few years, Squarespace, announced its plans to release an *iPhone
application* (“*The Squarespace iPhone application is completely hand-built.
Use it to check your site, post to your blog, manage your blog posts, and
see your traffic while on the go*.”), as well as better *social
media*integration.
A few years ago, when I started using Squarespace, I was impressed: it was
not free, but it was *cutting edge*. It offered everything I wanted: the
ability to *customize* the look and feel of the blog without the need to
edit html or CSS; basic “*moblogging*” (the ability to publish a post via
e-mail), *unlimited number* of blogs and static pages (I tend to like these)
under one account (within the limits of storage quota), easy-to-make *e-mail
forms*, reasonably informative *readership stats*, standard
*commenting*features, and an attractive
*interface*.
But over the last year, the explosion of social media and mobile computing
(including smart phones) has significantly changed the landscape of what it
means to blog in min-2009. My needs are different now than they were back in
2006, and, unfortunately, Squarespace is not keeping up… I need a platform
that will let me write a short post and then automatically push it to
multiple online channels, for example, Twitter, or Flickr (if the post
includes photos), and perhaps even Facebook (which I hardly ever use, and
strongly dislike, but perhaps would update it for the sake of many friends
who like it, if updating it were painless, and automatic). I also want to be
able to post and manage my blog through a reasonably full-featured
application from my *iPhone*, including the ability to easily add *photos*,
and *geotag* my location so it appears on an included map… Again,
Squarespace promisses - although very vaguely - some nebulous ‘social
networks integration” but so far it has not delivered… ANYTHING!
It seems the company’s efforts that previously focused on expanding and
improving the application itself, have now been redirected to relentless PR
and promotion, including massive advertising (on popular podcasts such as
Twit and Cranky Geeks), and an iPhone give-away promotion of Twitter. But
after four months of patiently waiting for the iPhone app and social
networks integration to materialize, and still not even an official planned
release date, or any other details, I am beginning to have doubts. How long
can Squarespace dangle the empty promise in front of its long-time
subscribers without actually having anything to show us? Moveover, after the
last update to version 5, Squarespace has lost much of its intuitive UI, and
replaced it with a much more complex, and often confusing set of controls.
The number of available templates remains very limited, and visually
underwhelming.
Is it time to move on to other, more up-to-date platforms? Is Squarespace
ever going to catch up with such bleeding edge new solutions as Posterous,
which integrates with anything from Blogger, and Twitter, to Facebook and
Flickr, and can deliver such integration NOW, not in the future? I am very
reluctant to change my blog’s location, but perhaps it’s something I should
seriously consider over the next few months…
[BTW: Unlike Posterous, Squarespace was unable to recognize my BOLDFACE or COLOR in the original e-mail, and replaced all of it with plain *asterisks* - bummer!]