There's growing competition in the blogging services software market, including an interesting product from a company that was featured in ISPCON's Startup City.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [November 7, 2005]

At ISPCON's Startup City in October, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Five Across was showing off its Mac OS-like blogware. The system is designed to be intuitive and easy to use without sacrificing any features.

Of course, there's plenty of competition in the blog space. TuCows has had a Blogware product for some time, and many site building services are rebranding themselves as blog builders. Tripod, for example, on its build page, now offers a blog builder and a photo album builder to its users. The best community blog software we've seen has never made it to market and was built in part for course credit by college students.

Then there's the question of whether ISPs should offer this service. Ideally, you should know that your customers want it before you make the investment to offer it (see Common Sense in Selling Services). If you're not regularly talking to your customers, invest in getting to know them before you make the investment to offer a new service.

Should you choose to offer blogging to your customers, you should look at all available options, and one of the providers you should consider is Five Across.

Earlier this year, Five Across won a DEMOGod award for the "fastest full featured demo in the West".

The software incorporates a site builder, blog builder, and instant messenger. It allows users to post files of any kind, including rich media, simply by dragging and dropping the files from the desktop to the web page. It keeps track of versions and permissions, and can therefore be used for collaboration. It can automatically publish RSS feeds.

Five Across websites can be found at bubbler.net, including the blog of Five Across' CEO Glenn Reid and of marketing maven and tech commentator Renee Blodgett's Blodgett Communications.

In her blog, down the avenue, Blodgett writes that Five Across' software is known for its "speed and simplicity."

For ISPs, the software is own brandable.

The company's technology incorporates the Server eXtensible Protocol Transport Protocol (SXTP) which is designed to remove incompatibility barriers. Clients are available for both Macintosh and Windows OS.

Pricing and availability
The product is available now. Pricing to ISPs was not disclosed, but pricing in the direct sales channel is visible here.

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