Inperson with The 4Cast is an interesting feature where we interview famous people and CEOs to share something about their everyday routine, both on Personal and Professional Front and what technology means to them in real-life.
Lanson Barton is the CEO and Founder of Blogsy App for the iPad, one of the most intuitive and powerful blogging client for the iPad. In this interview, he shares about what made them do this, how the company is growing up and Why Blogsy makes the iPad, a powerful tool for blogging.
Tell us something about yourself. The Company, the team, and where are you based out of?
So, I am an American, and I wanted to start a company that concentrates on mobile applications. I went out and found a team, two Koreans and A Dutch. The Dutch developer quit before even the first version launched and now, I have a team of two with me, and they both are from Korea.
How did Blogsy come into picture and tell us about the power of iPad for blogging.
We are basically bloggers and we were frustrated with what we could do on an iPad for Blogging. We weren’t happy with the blogging software that are on the iPad and they weren’t user friendly. Despite looking at the iPad as a powerful blogging tool, we still had to turn back to our desktops and laptops for managing content. So we thought, we could use the iPad as a potential device for blogging on the move and so we created this beautiful app called, Blogsy.
So, How do you see Blogsy to grow further? Do we have some new features coming up?
Yes! We have added some cool new features to our application. The app has been submitted to Apple for their approval, and we are expecting it to go live anytime soon. The version 3.4 is a huge update. Its’ pretty huge infact. We’ve added support for Tumblr and Vimeo. We’ve also added an option to add featured images to WordPress posts, custom fields support and documents management support too.
Blogsy has turned out to be a powerful app for the iPad for blogging, and with this update, we are aiming to make it huge! You can see the entire changelog in our company’s blog.
Do you think the $4.99 price tag is normal for the app? Many don’t think so.
There are people who think that this price tag is high, but there are people who are telling us that the $4.99 price tag which we have is low, when compared to the features that we have in the app and the power the app has, and they think the app should be $9.99 instead of the curent $5.
I think Apple made a huge mistake!
It actually depends on the people you’re dealing with. Because there’s a lot of casual people that are used to $0.99 apps, they think almost all the app should be the same. But there’s no way with the $0.99 we could recoupe the organization and go ahead with future development.
Personally I think Apple made a huge mistake, that they wanted the app developers to come out and they wanted the users to buy their apps and so they made the $0.99 price point. They built expectation now among the users is that the apps should be $0.99. And so there are a lot of apps that aren’t being developed because these are not reasonable price points.
Is Blogsy coming to Android devices soon?
No! It is not coming. And we are not aiming at it!
Do you think Android is not a platform for bloggers?
Nope! Android is definitely a platform for the bloggers, especially the tablet devices.
Then What’s stopping Blogsy from coming to Android tablets?
In Android, developers just don’t make money!
I think the biggest problem that we found in our research is, that the Developers are just not making any money. We will have to invest time into something that we are not going to make money! Also I think, WordPress and other platforms has a pretty decent app for the tablets.
Blogsy is coming to iPhone atleast?
We just haven’t made a solid decision on that yet. We think iPhone users are pretty much like quick bloggers. They don’t need editing, styling elements for their blogposts when they publish it on the iPhone.
So what’s with the next version of Blogsy?
The Blogsy 3.4 update, which we got onto the App Store about a week back, is a major update, but it doesn’t have any interface update to it. It is more of a performance tuning and feature addition to the existing application.
So what does the Blogsy team do in the free time?
We just have fun. We are just a very small team of developers and we have got our own Podcast that we do. And we are just enjoying what we are doing and we hope to keep the same in the long run!
Customer support for Blogsy. Any thoughts on that?
We think the customer support is as important as the app itself. And we are working so hard to respond to customers who come to us with some problems. The vast majority of people may be able to solve majority of the problems they face with the app.
How do you think Apple is going on right now?
Apple is actually going on the right path right now. But if rumors are true. And if Apple brings up the 7-inches tablet into the market, I think to me, that’s a clear signal that Apple’s heading down the wrong road.
I think one of the beauties of Steve Jobs is simple. We are going to do these main products and screw everything else. But if they start with 7-inches iPad, that means they are losing that focus!
It was great talking to you Lance, and do you have anything to say on Inperson with The 4Cast?
Well, I think you guys have a different approach. This is just coming from our team now. A lot of app developers are very small companies, who don’t have much money to market themselves. But I think you guys are providing them a great visibility by bringing up Inperson with The 4Cast.