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Oct 20 2008 9:15AM EDT

Six Apart CEO: Down Economy Boosts Blogging

Kevin Maney writes: If you're looking for something -- anything! -- that might actually benefit from the present stinking rotting corpse of an economy, try blogging companies.


I caught up with Six Apart CEO Chris Alden over a Belgian beer in downtown Washington, DC. The company is one of the most significant players in blogging, with its Movable Type software, Typepad blog services and Vox "social blogging" site. As you might imagine, talk turned to the economy. And Alden offered a surprising note of optimism for his company. Of course, a crushing recession could hurt Six Apart's big media customers (which include Conde Nast), which in turn might affect how much those customers spend with Six Apart. 

But on the flip side, a bad economy will probably lead to an overall uptick in blogging, Alden says. "When you don't know where else to invest," he explains, "you invest in yourself." Which is kind of a slick way of saying that when you  get laid off or your company goes under, it's a good time to build your personal brand by blogging. Or, for that matter, if you suddenly find yourself with a lot of time on your hands, you might blog to fill the empty spaces. "You look for a way to reassert control," Alden points out. "That's a reason blogging surges in down times."

Six Apart, in fact, was founded in September 2001, just as the country was reeling from the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The company grew through the sputtering economy of the next two years. Now, seven years later, blogging has made the leap from hobby to industry. In the next phase, Alden says, blogs will evolve into niche social networks, competing against big social networks like Facebook in much the same way that blogs competed against big media properties a half-dozen years ago. "Social networking and blogging are converging," Alden says. And that's where Alden is guiding the company next.

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