Yvonne, what a moving tribute to a very special man. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and feelings. I hope the flame of friendship between those of us who were on the forefront of business blogging will burn ever brighter as we remember with fondness this gentle, quiet man. His influence certainly burns bright!

I happened upon this post today and wanted to say that it had nothing less than a profound impact on the industry in terms of Realtors adopting blogging as a marketing tool. I can't tell you how many Realtors have told me over the years how this book served as their inspiration to give blogging a try. While neither Richard or I are still active in the real estate industry, many of my friends - both of the real and the virtual social network variety - are Realtors. Realty Blogging spawned the formation of those relationships. On a personal note, this book served as my entre into the world of publishing. Since then I've had opportunity to author or co-author three other titles, one of which was published by Wiley.

Completely agree that we're moving back into a more closed and controlled, albeit still very chaotic and noisy, version of the web. Portals...apps... what will this all look like in five years?

I feel your pain. It sounds to me like you need to hire a blog designer who has experience with Wordpress. Short of that, I recommend Wordpress For Dummies. In the meantime, here are a couple of pointers. First of all, you didn't install WP on your computer, you downloaded the zip file and opened it. You need to ftp the files to a folder on your site. I recommend creating a folder called "blog," and uploading the files there. If you have epanel access, hopefully, you have an installation application like Fanstatico to make it easy to set up. When it comes to installing Wordpress, it isn't a blog platform for the faint of heart. I do this type of work if you'd like to discuss hiring me to assist you.

Both support custom domain names.

Jim, thank you for including The Digital Handshake in your list of books. I appreciate it, especially considering the quality of the post your wrote. Good stuff!

Thanks for saying so. Sometimes I feel as if I'm the only one in the world doing this, but I guess we all feel that way from time to time. Solo consultants that is.

Thanks Melissa. Gotta look out for the small business owner.

@JJ - Thanks for the clarification. I was never very good at math.

It would be good if Groupon et al did offer help in crafting a follow-up strategy, but that's not the business they are in. I think it's an opportunity for people like me to reach out to businesses and do it.

But, can they have it both ways? Can they be both a software products company AND a media company? Speaking of software companies, Microsoft just announced the company is dumping its own product, LiveSpaces, in favor of using Wordpress...and MSFT is a software company. What I'm saying is that it's one thing to have a proprietary platform on which a media company is built. It's another to also position yourself as a software products company supporting bloggers who have no interest in the media side of the equation. Time will tell.

"The kinds of people we want to work with are emerging media personalities," was the quote from Troy in the Adweek article. It follows then, by inference, that the kinds of people he does not want to work with are people like me, who have no interest in becoming such. Regardless of whether he intended to create a dividing line or not, the comment was insulting.

"The kinds of people we want to work with are emerging media personalities," was the quote from Troy in the Adweek article. It follows then, by inference, that the kinds of people he does not want to work with are people like me, who have no interest in becoming such. Regardless of whether he intended to create a dividing line or not, the comment was insulting.

I'm proud to be one of the "regular people" that SAYMedia CEO Troy Young says he doesn't want. How about you?

Actually, Natalie, there is yet another concern. It's not that the platform will be maintained, even upgraded, but that the platform will be upgraded to suit the needs of the "media" business. That may very well coincide with the needs of those of us who don't intend on taking advantage of the benefits resulting from the merger, but who want an easy to use blog platform. On the other hand, it may not. It's too early to tell at this point, but I won't be surprised if and when the rug is pulled out from under us. If that happens, then I'll have no choice but to bail. If the concerns of a long-time user and advocate mean anything, then I hope SAY Media takes mine into consideration.

Thanks for the feedback Natalie. My greatest concern is whether the platform will continue to be supported and improve, so I hope you're right. However, allow me to voice an additional concern. My focus over the years has been on advocating for Typepad as a tool for small business use. For some time now, Typepad has cast itself in that light. Will that emphasis continue, or, if as I'm reading and hearing on the SAY Media site, will the emphasis completely redirect to a focus on those who wish to be "emerging media personalities?"

Good advice Teresa. Yes, migrating is a hassle. I'm holding out on making any changes at the moment, but will back up the data to be sure.