Don't Let the Bozos Grind You Down
Graffiti 1.0 is due to be released today (February 18th, 2008). While doing some early morning web surfing I came across a great line by Guy Kawasaki, "Don't Let the Bozos Grind You Down".
When we first started telling people about Graffiti there was a lot of excitement, but there was also quite a bit of skepticism around the idea of a single category, no ASPX pages, is it a CMS or a blog, no source code, and OMG you have the audacity to charge for commercial usage.
It is very easy to buy into what the skeptics are saying. Most are not trying to purposely complicate things for you and lead you down the wrong path. Instead, they are just trying to pull you towards the middle where it is safe and comfortable. Unfortunately, safe and comfortable are not a great way to build a new product (service/etc). As you move towards the center what differentiates you starts to diminish, passionate users are harder to come by, and IMO your odds of being successful start to rapidly decline.
While we did listen and consider as much of the feedback as possible, on most of the items we stuck with our original ideas and tried to bring something different (and better) to the market. Being different will not guarantee success, but doing things the safe way would almost certainly guarantee failure.
For now, the jury is still out on Graffiti. So far it looking like it will be a big hit and I promise you this is just the start!
Comments
Syuhada on on 2.18.2008 at 4:57 PM
Graffiti is great. I love it very much and as you said that this is only a start.
Thank you Scott and all of the friends at Telligent for building such a great product.
DamianM on on 2.18.2008 at 5:28 PM
I think you have a bit of a winner on your hands. I was a bit skeptical about the ease of use after evaluating community server for a few projects and deciding that it was just too unwieldy to configure and customise.
But I downloaded and had a tinker with Graffiti and I think you've done a great job with it. I've moved my blog over from subtext and I'd certainly consider it for some "real" projects.
I like the UI, nvelocity for templating makes a lot more sense than the skinned usercontrols model and I dig vistadb. Moving my old content in with blogml was easy, my only hurdle was redirecting my old URLs to the new pages. I was incredibly greatful when I found that you'd left all the Global.asax code in the asax and I could hook in there and do some redirects. Having a system to automate redirection of old URLs from an import would be awesome.
Well done though, I think you've done a great job!
BrendonS on on 2.20.2008 at 9:40 PM
Keep up the good work, Graffiti is a great change for web developers looking for a tool that is easy to use and in the .NET space has great vision. I already have 2 friends who have seen how great the product really is and have even suggested ideas on how to build additions.
Can't wait to see what the future holds.