“A new spam blocker called Defensio is attempting to improve on the standard set by Automattic’s Akismet, the default blocker for WordPress” – reports TechCrunch.

But they are planning to do more than improve… they want to replace Akismet. From Defensio’s FAQ:

• Is Defensio a replacement for Akismet?
  Yes…
• Will Defensio outperform Akismet?
  -We can’t make any promises (sorry), but our early testing suggests that Defensio’s performance is very, very good. As with any adaptive filter, it will only improve with time.
• My accuracy is not satisfactory. Why?
  -If you have recently installed Defensio, then try to be patient. The filter’s learning algorithms take some time (usually no more than a couple weeks) to become very effective…
• Does Defensio work in conjunction with other spam filtering plugins?
  Not really. We highly recommend that you use Defensio as your stand alone spam filtering solution.

And therein lies the rub. Other plugins, like Spam Karma 2 may also outperform Akismet at times, but they don’t replace it; instead, they work together quite well. A status change in either takes effect in the other. Now, I don’t know how good Defensio will be, but it takes a huge leap of faith to give up the proven standard (i.e. Akismet) and replace it with something that may need weeks of learning, as we’re warned by the FAQ. They lost me as an early user right away.

The bigger question here, for software startups: should you start challenging the market leader right at launch, or ride with it, grow as part of the “ecosystem”, then perhaps declare you’re better and no longer need them after you got traction?

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Tags: akismet, Blogging, competition, defensio, ecosystem, spam, spam filters, spam karma, startup strategy, Startups, wordpress