Marco.org

I learned about Gelato (as did Ghostvirus, Cameron, and Dawn) from TechCrunch’s article this morning. (By the way, TechCrunch, I’m disappointed to see that a “professional” blog has Snap Preview Anywhere enabled.)

It’s a user-installable tumblelog engine so you can put it on your own webserver (as opposed to Tumblr, where we don’t give you the software, but we host and run the service for you). Apparently it’s very similar to Tumblr.

I haven’t installed it or seen it yet, but I did glance through some of the source code. I wish Gelato the best, but I’m not worried about potential competition.

Some people just don’t feel comfortable having their data and services in someone else’s hands, while most people don’t want to (or can’t) host, maintain, and upgrade web software themselves. There are also different feature sets: installable software is more easily customizable with plugins and source modification, while hosted services can more eaisly provide community and directory features. We can even steal features from each other to make both products better.

There’s always going to be a market for both of us.