Why I hate TypePad
I hate TypePad for no good reason other than that it doesn't have virality behind it. This post is not really about TypePad, although I enjoy the opportunity to bash randomly. No, this post is about Marc Andreesen's reentry into the browser arena. It's called Rockmouth or RockManinoff or RockScam (my name) and I like it for reasons I haven't figured out. But more than anything, it's not TypePad.
Normally I wouldn't join a private beta. Everything is a private beta these days, so when someone makes a big deal out of it I usually wait for Scoble to grind it into dust. Sure enough, Robert did a video with the "inventors", but I'd already succumbed by then. Perhaps it was because my CloudBlog colleague John Taschek wore me down with how fast Chrome was, so I was already moving my sign-ons from Firefox when RockBlank hit.
The UI is Chrome only slower, which seems counter intuitive only if you never use Flash or Adobe AIR to pre-slow the machine down. There are buttons along the edges of the screen that list favorite Facebook people (the program is Facebook-based at the identity level) on the left and streams on the right. I spent some time filling the left channel with people I really liked as opposed to the other 2000 friends I've 'booked. However, after about 30, the rest of these uber friends are only accessible if you click on a button to expand into a list.
The streams on the right include Twitter and Facebook, plus your choice of RSS (gack) feeds. Eventually I loaded the TechCrunch feed to see how my recent return to the acquired fold was doing. (I'm writing a Saturday column there which would have been crossposted here if not for an unfortunate anatomical reference I was reluctant to rectify.) As soon as I did this — and most likely completely unrelated — all hell broke loose.
A Rockman requestor appeared informing me of an upgrade promising the latest features and bug fixes. Bear in mind that everything was working fine at this point. Closing down the app and reloading the upgrade immediately eliminated the Edges interface and left me with a non-standard Chrome and a spinning Home icon next to the Back button. This icon represented the inability to find the RockMeth server and all of the preferences that I had laboriously stored when I chose my super special friend list and RSS (gack) settings. Also Twitter didn't work, producing a blank screen when I added it on the right.
Now I was hooked. Nothing binds me more to a platform than to be caught in limbo between an interface I was just figuring out was useless and a broken browser that I had switched the default to after the millionth suggestor requestor. You can't go back without abandoning all your work, which ratifies exactly how much time you've wasted. You can't move forward because you have no idea what forward means. So I started a stalling strategy, reading web pages in hopes I would look up sometime and see the spinning icon stopped and my Edges returned.
Of course, a watched pot never boils. Sometime the next day I noticed the edges were back. At the time I wrote this off as having to do with the private beta and the rush to get past the velvet ropes. However, today a new upgrade presented itself and the spinner from hell is back. There's no tech support, no help docs, no indication of what they've fixed or feature enabled, no luck indeed. But now I have too much invested to go away. Not sure why I'm so interested either.
I think it's because RockMelt (oh no, that's actually the real name) is a representation of our desire to move on from Y2K and email and IM and RSS and fully embrace the emerging platform. It doesn't do anything new, but it offers a sandbox for what something like it will feel like when we grow up, which of course will happen some small amount quicker as a result of the work done here.
And one thing for sure: it won't lead me back to TypePad. Disclosure: I hate TypePad because I love WordPress, which TypePad ain't. TypePad does everything pretty well, but it suffers from the absence of WordPress momentum, the subtle sense of hope that the organic mulch which is the plugin community will produce steady incremental improvements. Rockmath is stuck in neutral, but it has the hint of what might happen going for it. TypePad doesn't. I hate TypePad.
