Weblogs, Inc. co-founder and CTO Brian Alvey is preparing to launch his new startup – a content management and hosting system called Crowd Fusion. From what we hear (I haven’t been able to speak to Alvey yet), the company will provide a hosted all-in-one platform for blogging, wikis, podcasting, standard web pages, forums, etc., and will also allow management of a variety of properties under a single dashboard. It will compete directly with blogging platforms like Wordpress.com and Typepad, as well as more industrial strength CMS systems that large publishers use.
If anyone can build it, Alvey and co-founder Craig Wood (also of Weblogs, Inc.) can. Alvey has been building content management systems since at least the mid nineties, including systems for Business Week and TV Guide. He was also the architect of Weblogs, Inc. and their associated CMS, Blogsmith. AOL acquired Weblogs, Inc. in October 2005.
Crowd Fusions seems to be the next generation of Blogsmith, since it includes lots of content types other than blogs. The company, which is based in New York, hasn’t launched yet, but we hear they’re busy raising a first round of capital.
Alvey co-founded Weblogs, Inc. with Jason Calacanis. Calacanis launched his new startup, Mahalo, in May 2007.
will crowdfusion be free?
This is exactly what JoinSources is. We’re in private beta. Not trying to spam with a promotion (okay a little) but just wanted to highlight the fact that this is an underexposed market space — affordable CMS and content publishing that rivals industrial strength CMS. Michael, this is an emerging category that should not be grouped with “instant publishing” products — and it’s good see you’re not doing that.
http://www.joinsources.com
LMFAO, I like how you managed to squeeze Mahalo in there at the end.
As a heavy Blogsmith user, I can easily say that many of the features that Crowd Fusion supposedly has makes me supremely jealous.
I’m curious why he’s seeking VC money? he can easily afford the investment. or is it still ‘never invest your own money’ mentality?
shouldn’t be to hard to get the funds. Sounds like a great idea
ComicMix is already running on the platform. http://www.comicmix.com/
it will be for what and moreover it is free?
“since it includes lots of content types other than blogs”
Michael, what other content types are you referring to? Can you list them out here please? thanks.
it’s going to be interesting to see how this new CMS will compete against Wordpress. i think the CMS market is quite saturated, and it’s not going to be easy to market a new system based on just a small number of new/modified features…
We have been providing such forum hosting since 2003. However, no grounbreaking innovation has been made in this sphere by any company. It would be interesting to see what they will come up with, considering that Forumer already have large slice of forum hosting market.
i agree with #11
hosted joomla/drupal?
Brian is a great guy and I’m sure whatever he comes out with will be powerful.
do we need another hosted CMS solution? it will have to be one heck of a system to compete with wordpress
I have kept saying it would be nice if somebody could wrap it all together. Hopefully there is a bookmarking feature in the mix as well.
God, again… what’s up with Mahalo man. WHY do you guys always mention, talk about, refer to Mahalo? It’s so hyped that it seems like it’s the new shit but it is really nothing special. Really.
Nice article. Thanks for the unexpected attention!
I put up the one-page site to answer questions about who is involved and give the crowdfusion.com domain something to point to instead of my blog — not to create speculation.
Regarding WordPress: I refer several people a week to WordPress — people who ask me if they can use Blogsmith — and I’m one of Matt’s biggest cheerleaders.
I’ll definitely tell you more when there’s more to tell. Thanks again.
Sounds really nice. It’s a great idea
Thanks for sharing this wonderful Article with us!
Interesting, I am always curious what else people can come up in the world when we often feel there is an amazing variety of brilliant ideas already and everything was developed…
LMFAO, I like how you managed to squeeze Mahalo in there at the end.
I was waiting for something like to come up, after years with joomla, a platform that highly respect. I think if crowdfusion implements a business plan like the one from the Magento team it wil do good for both sides.