SEOmoz to be a fulltime software provider

Or at least that's what Rand's latest post says.

I'm not surprised by this move, even though I don't know that I agree with it. SEOmoz's premium membership services have long been the primary source of revenue for the company. Ever since that round of VC they took on, those services have increasingly become the focus of the company.

Ultimately, they know what side their bread is buttered on...the post above goes into all the detail and reasonings therein. I do use their crawling tools here and there, although to be fair, they aren't what anyone who would know such things call "Enterprise". So perhaps the Distilled partnership and refocus will be what helps them go "to the next level".

My previous agency decided they'd straddle the balance of a consultant and a software provider. It failed miserably for a multitude of reasons (the least of which was not that the entire company was afloat because of VC and the Devil wanted his Due...like now). While I don't think SEOmoz will fail or fall into that VC pitfall, I do think this will need to be a delicate balance between offering tools the engines provide and, well NOT putting yourself in head to head competition with competitors. Not that I think SEOmoz envisions developing an analytics platform (which is precisely what my old agency sought to do), but they COULD put themselves in the line of fire of Ad Planner or webmaster tools. Not that that's a bad thing persay, but I do believe Google takes a "you're with us or you're against us" position when it comes to what software you offer.