PodLeaders - Thought Leaders podcast

Episode 36 of the PodLeaders show - 41 mins 29 secs

My guest on Podleaders today is Loic Le Meur. Loic Le Meur is Executive Vice President & General Manager Europe of the blog platform company Six Apart. Six Apart are the developers of TypePad, Movable Type and Live Journal and Loic is the organiser of the blogging conference Les Blogs. I learned a lot in this interview about Six Apart, their products and the French!

Here are all the questions I asked Loic along with their times during the interview:

Loic, can you start off by telling us who is Loic Le Meur? What is your background? - 0:42

As a matter of interest, where does the name Six Apart come from? - 2:00

Six Apart is a blog platform company, as we mentioned, and you have several offerings in this arena - TypePad, Movable Type and Live Journal. That’s it, isn’t it? There aren’t any others apart from those three? - 2:32

Let’s talk about the three that people know right now, TypePad, Movable Type and Live Journal. What are the differences between them? Why would I use one as opposed to another? - 3:02

How do you maintain the privacy aspect of it? How do you restrict the number of people accessing it? - 9:25

I have heard quite a bit of criticism of Movable Type recently. People seem to be becoming frustrated with the lack of innovation with it and the lack of support; especially when compared to the likes of WordPress. I was talking to Todd Cochrane last night and his quote was “Some of us are getting sick of waiting for a new revision”. How do you respond to that criticism? - 9:55

Just looking at the pricing of TypePad and MovableType, I think you can start off with Movable Type for around €40 per annum, and TypePad for around €50 per annum… - 12:03

Under what circumstances can you use MovableType for free? - 13:18

There’s an increasing problem with comment spam and trackback spam on blogs - what kinds of steps are Six Apart taking to minimise that for people? - 14:42

I was listening to TalkCrunch yesterday and Tony Conrad from Sphere and AutoMattic was on it. He said that in excess of 80% of comments these days is spam… - 18:06

Audience Questions -

Dennis Howlett
Is there something about French culture that has contributed to the spectacular growth of blogs in France? - 19:16
Is there any clear evidence of business blogging taking off in France or is it still a few examples like LeClerc and LaFraise? - 24:44

Todd Cochrane:
What is SixApart going to do to revitalize the third party developers that you lost when MT went to a pay model? - 27:18
Also finding plugins is not easy, do you think you should have someone dedicated to talking about the new plugins? - 28:13

Back to my own questions.

What do you see as the advantages to businesses of blogging? Why should businesses be blogging? - 29:27

Talk to me about the new French competitor to Google - Jacques Chirac’s pet project Quaero… - 33:08

Finally, when is the next Les Blogs? - 36:46

Download the entire interview here
(19mb mp3).