"Movable Type Motion" - a new social application by Six Apart is now in beta

Microblogging service Pownce was shut down on December 15, 2008, following an acquisition by Six Apart on December 1st. Users were told they had until the 15th to export their information. The last nail was barely in the poor micro-blogging service’s virtual coffin, when Six Apart made another big announcement (via twitter – irony, much?)

My cynicism came out to see the reference to Pownce in the announcement of the new “Motion” offering. Why purchase a service just to shut it down, and reposition and relaunch the same day? But a quick read of the Movable Type Motion documentation made things clear. Microblogging is supported in Motion, and that is where the similarities end.

As I stated in a response to a post on The Social Path, Pownce’s biggest shortcoming was a lack of critical mass. Individuals had little need to sign up for Pownce, as there wasn’t a critical mass of users, and no unique benefit to cultivate this following.

With Motion, Six Apart has addressed these barriers, and more. From the user’s standpoint, Motion offers the features of Pownce, Tumblr, AND Friendfeed. The system supports “rich microblogging”- you can post text, links, images or video. It serves as an aggregator: individuals can import their actions from across the web. Users can sign up via existing online accounts (including Google Friend Connect or Facebook Connect), so they are not establishing yet another online profile. It’s not clear if there is also the opportunity to create a new Motion account for a specific instance.

Image courtesy of http://www.movabletype.com/motion/

So what’s the big wow?

This isn’t simply an end-user service. This is a Movable Type product: it’s something that can be installed on an organization’s own webserver. No more fail whale because Twitter’s servers are overrun; site developers can set up their own instance of Motion. This means customization and added security. This means more valuable engagement within an established community, not trying to carve out niches within the vast twitterverse. This means the information contributed by the community stays on your site, offering greater reputation and ‘google juice’ than something pulled in via javascript or displayed in an iframe.

One of the most intriguing features for me is the ability to create “private, custom action aggregators to track sentiment and glean intelligence from conversations around the web through action streams.” Yes, that’s my cherished buzz metrics monitoring. There are many commercial services available to do this work, but I like the ability of doing so in-house (this leads to the possibility of sanitizing the stream, and then displaying it immediately).

Some organizations continue to shy away from the use of third-party online services out of concern for reliability and longevity. By allowing organizations to host this application locally, Six Apart is offering a secure solution with a clear method of revenue generation.

Motion is now available in beta for download. According to TechCrunch, Six Apart has promised a working demo, but I haven’t seen it yet. The FAQ state there is a way to run it alongside a Wordpress blog, so I just may be trying it out myself.