Is WordPress In Danger From Pursuing Competitors?

WordPress has been known and loved by plenty of bloggers not only in the United States, but throughout the world. With breakthrough technology simplifying the process of publishing content on the Internet, it’s been a force to be reckoned with. But is there too much of a good thing going on for the company? New products now available like Squarespace, Graffiti — and I’ll even throw Drupal into the mix — have been slowly rising in popularity.

Squarespace, for example, is now becoming quite popular due to its recent exposure by promotion and advertising. It’s offering hosting, blogging platforms, and the ability to transfer WordPress posts over to its platform all for a cheap price of $8.99. Yes, it’s charging a small price for the service but is that going to be a tangible threat to WordPress?

WordPress has additionally been adding a large amount of plugins as of late, which I believe is slowing the overall service down tremendously. Sure, the WordPress software itself isn’t slow but people are installing hundreds of plugins to their websites and blogs. I myself love having these plugins available as it gives me easy access to promotional software, however, new services are offering a more simple way of publishing without all of the extra addons.

As new content management systems and blogging platforms are starting to get into WordPress’s brand and idea there is definitely an increasing amount of competition. This raises the question of possible ways that WordPress may attempt to build a profit from the increasing attention. Will PPC advertising, fees, and other forms of income become a way for WordPress to generate revenue?

I’m a dedicated WordPress blogger and have loved its software right from the get go. On the other hand there is no time like the present for change and I’m beginning to consider alternative software. This may help me rethink the way I blog and present my ideas as I’m so used to publishing my ideas on the same old platform.

What do you think of WordPress? Do you know of any alternatives to WordPress? Do you think it’s time that WordPress revamps its entire platform?