A few days ago the next feature list for WordPress (version 2.7) was released to the world. The one thing that really caught my attention was the new comment API. Particularly the point that a lot of people are focussing on, that it will make it possible to built desktop clients for managing comments.

For a few years now we have been hearing about the move away from the desktop. Software as a service, web 2.0, thin clients, this and all the talk of Google competing with Microsoft Office. So it is interesting to see blogs actively developing connections to move software that started out on the web back onto the desktop.

So what does this tell us?

It tells us in the first instance something we already knew: that the web contains more hype than substance. But it also tells us that real people are not ready to work solely on the net.

The important thing though is to ask ‘why?’.

Is it because it is not possible to create a compelling web experience? Perhaps, but somehow I doubt that.

Is it because most people’s experience of the web experience is poor, and so they don’t trust it? More likely.

Is it because the net is still a fundamentally new thing and most people don’t really have that much contact with it? Almost certainly a contributing factor.

For me the advantages of WordPress, or any blogging system come to think of it, is that it doesn’t require desktop software. For all the great things I have heard about Windows Live Writer I still don’t want to use it and I think the fact that anyone does want to use it is no so much to do with the great work that has gone into it but more a failure to develop the experience people want, or to explain the benefits, or something else that I haven’t yet thought of.

What about you? Do you use a desktop client? if so which one and why? Tell us what you think is wrong with WordPress.

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