TypePad community emerging

Apparently, if you build a “recently updated” page, they will come. Start over at authenticgeek to join the party talking about a TypePad community. See elsewhere for TypePad Snob (TPS) syndrome.
It will be interesting to see how the software complements the automated update page as a community-builder. Easy photo albums, a place for your picture, encouragement to include information about yourself, the built-in commenting feature (especially for blogspot users who lacked it with Blogger – Livejournalers, of course, have a thing or two to teach the rest of the blogosphere about building community through weblogs), all of these things contribute to our ability to see each other as people and connect on a human level.
Then, as the thing scales up, people tend to clump together based more on shared interests, with the underlying technology less of an identity-building factor. In this incubation period, though, the feeling of camaraderie is much easier to come by, and I predict that strong relationships will come out of it.
And let’s not forget Movable Type. Lovely and lickable as TypePad undoubtedly is (when I buy my real account, I’m going for the typepad.com domain and not blogs.com as on this linotype blog – I’ve just learned in the past the risks of burning out a username during a beta test: I used xian@pbi.net when Pacbell was testing their online service and then learned that xian was 86’d forever from their system and so I could have xian@pacbell.net, which would have been my first choice for a username over there), I still love Movable Type and of course want it to inherit the entire TypePad UI and feature set.
As Collen points out:

Ok, so, Blogger has a shirt and livejournal has 4 shirts but there is no Movable Type shirt! I would so wear an MT shirt. Who’s with me?! … Hello?