SilkBlogs Just a Lot of Spin

I was interested (if highly skeptical) to hear about the release of SilkBlogs, ‘an enterprise blogging solution that provides a people-centric (yowza) means for sharing thoughts, ideas, information and documents on the Web’. SilkWare makes content management solutions, so this is a natural fit. However, having given it a quick once-over, it’s apparent to me how this is much of an improvement on MovableType or Blogger. Their product differentiation points are pretty bogus:

• Support – Clearly this is a shot at the roll-your-own MT solution. Blogger has decent support, as does TypePad, so this is hardly applicable.
• Security – They say that ‘SilkBlogs is the only blogging solution that is built from ground up to be geared towards the management of groups of users’. They’ve got remarkable insight into the development of other blogging tools, don’t they? Regardless, MT, TypePad, Blogger (and possibly Radio Userland) all have user management.
• Content Management – Yes, they make content management solutions. Is SilkBlogs just a strategy to sell through customers to their other, pricier systems? It’s unclear to me–aside from robust cutting and pasting–how SilkBlogs’ content management strategy is any more sophisticated than any of its competitors.

In short, I’m not buying (quite literally) this ‘enterprise’ bullocks. If they’re really going to position themselves as the corporate blogging tool of choice, they’ve got to offer a lot more than the current tool sets.

If they’re savvy about marketing this product, somebody from SilkRoad will find this entry and reply to my criticisms. Check it out–the blog as viral (anti-)marketing.