Commendable transparency from Shane at the Telegraph, regarding the collapse of their technology partner Interesource. I must admit, I’d completely missed news of their demise (as apparently had Shane… and Wikipedia, still referring to them in the present tense.) They seemed to be carving out a decent niche in the news/politics field, with the Telegraph work and the Conservatives’ Stand Up Speak Up site. I also know they were talking seriously to one other Major Media Brand (but that the figures they were quoting were rather, er, high).
There isn’t much detail about how it all went wrong: no hint from the archived content on the Interesource staff blogs, and the little detail offered by those suddenly jobless doesn’t sound pretty. Meanwhile, the Telegraph guys are working on something with ex-Interesourcer James Higgs’s new operation.
I guess this all explains why the Mirror is now using Movable Type for its Kevin Maguire blog, having used Interesource’s irPublish platform until recently – by my reckoning, until the week before Christmas. The Maguire header still contains an entry for blogs.mirror.co.uk – which gives Page Not Found. But we’ve still got doggysnaps, I suppose.
Responses
Sounds like another arguments for using open source solutions to me! Even if you outsource the development and management of (say) a WordPress based solution, you can always pick up the pieces afterwards.
Delighted someone else made that point; I feel like I’m moving from being a WordPress advocate to a zealot (fundamentalist?). But hey Dave, I’ll set ’em up, you knock ’em down. 🙂
I must say, as an ex-interesource employee some 15 months ago, I am not at all surprised; A collective failing and implosion of the egos within I am in no doubt!
[…] access to their code and data – and by difficult I mean expensive, in some cases prohibitively so. Simon Dixon guesses who this might have […]
Having led the Telegraph, Conservatives and DoggySnaps projects (amongst others) whilst Creative Director of good old Interesource I have to admit that I was also mystified and saddened to hear of their demise. It’s almost an achievement to have c*cked things up so royally at a time when they had so much going for them. Luckily, I had escaped a mere month before to set up Made by Many, a social media agency, with our excellent senior designer Isaac. Isaac was responsible for most of IR’s best work, including My Telegraph. As for what really happened, speculation abounds but all I know for sure is that the company was in the process of merging with a company called Global Beach. Things didn’t go as planned. Global Beach now look after some of Interesource’s former clients. Most of Interesource’s talented staff were left out of work and out of pocket. All very sad.
[…] Simon Dickson notes that Interesource’s demise might explain why the Mirror seems to have moved Kevin Macguire’s blog to a new Moveable Type platform. It […]