Podcasts about mullenweg

Traditionally a warning to tyrants and rogue emperors, todays middle of March madness opened with news of Google Core Update rollout, a major vulnerability in a popular WP SEO plug-in, and signs American search users are indicating they're thinking about being in a very sour mood. We also note it is the 15th anniversary of the week Rhea Drysdale saved SEO from a notorious trademark abuser. The Googleopoly woke up to see the US DOJ's 4 remedies to settle the larger of two anti-trust cases. OpenAI calls for free access for all copyrighted materials for AI Training (citing national security), while the Columbia School of Journalism notes how AI Search engines are "confidently wrong too often". Speaking of tyrannical behaviour, Mullenweg is still wegging out over WPEngine and Meta wants its advertisers to connect to GA4. We also talk about how to talk to Google AIO to learn what it thinks about your business, site reputation abuse, robots.txt, low effort content, and so much more...Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This week, we cover the Sonos executive shake-up, AWS CEO Matt Garman's take on AI, and check in on OpenTofu's growth. Plus, some thoughts on broken windows and Emacs no longer being preinstalled on macOS. Watch the YouTube Live Recording of Episode 502 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flerIIV5OW8) Runner-up Titles Anecdote Investigations. The Software Defined Elves are gonna send you a RØDECaster. Well, maybe we should talk about emacs more! I still have a box of cables Buy One, Pay for One If it's fine, it's fine Rundown Sonos' interim CEO hits all the right notes in first letter to employees (https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/13/24342354/sonos-interim-ceo-tom-conrad-employee-letter) Breaking: Sonos CEO Patrick Spence steps down after disastrous app launch (https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/13/24342179/sonos-ceo-patrick-spence-resignation-reason-app) Sonos Chief Product Officer to Leave; Interim CEO to Take Role (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-14/sonos-chief-product-officer-to-leave-interim-ceo-to-take-role?utm_medium=email&utm_source=author_alert&utm_term=250114&utm_campaign=author_19842959) AI's payoff will be massive, says AWS CEO Matt Garman (https://www.theverge.com/24338171/aws-ceo-matt-garman-ai-chips-anthropic-cloud-computing-trainium-decoder-podcast-interview) OpenTofu Turns One With OpenTofu 1.9.0 (https://thenewstack.io/opentofu-turns-one-with-opentofu-1-9-0/) macOS No Longer Ships with Emacs (https://batsov.com/articles/2025/01/12/macos-no-longer-ships-with-emacs/) Relevant to your Interests The 8 worst technology failures of 2024 (https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/12/17/1108883/the-8-worst-technology-failures-of-2024/) 41% of companies worldwide plan to reduce workforces by 2030 due to AI | CNN Business (https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/08/business/ai-job-losses-by-2030-intl/index.html) How I Replaced Notion with Reminders, Numbers, and Notes (https://archive.ph/2024.11.16-053045/https://medium.com/westenberg/how-i-replaced-notion-with-reminders-numbers-and-notes-38282543b29b) Automattic cuts WordPress contribution hours, blames WP Engine (https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/10/24340717/automattic-wordpress-contribution-hours-cut-wp-engine) How Fidelity's “chaos buffet” pushed AWS to new Lambda tools (https://www.thestack.technology/fidelity-chaos-buffet-aws-lambda-fis/) Zuckerberg on Rogan: Facebook's censorship was "something out of 1984" (https://www.axios.com/2025/01/10/mark-zuckerberg-joe-rogan-facebook-censorship-biden) Meta Reorientates Itself Around ‘Masculine Energy' – Pixel Envy (https://pxlnv.com/linklog/meta-masculine-energy/) #6907 Kong-ingress-controller 3.4 has high CPU usage when running 2 pods (https://github.com/Kong/kubernetes-ingress-controller/issues/6907) Survey: AI Tools are Increasing Amount of Bad Code Needing to be Fixed (https://devops.com/survey-ai-tools-are-increasing-amount-of-bad-code-needing-to-be-fixed/) Exclusive | Hanging Out at Starbucks? You Now Need to Order Something (https://www.wsj.com/business/hospitality/starbucks-new-cafe-policy-dining-room-e9ab07bf) A new AI-powered security tool is promising to reinvent how companies secure login credentials (https://www.axios.com/2025/01/14/ai-cybersecurity-startup-intel-funding?utm_term=emshare) Anexia moves 12,000 VMs off VMware to homebrew KVM platform (https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/13/anexia_vmware_to_kvm_migration/) Mullenweg's Grip On WordPress Challenged In New Court Filing (https://www.searchenginejournal.com/mullenwegs-grip-on-wordpress-challenged-in-new-court-filing/537416/) Apple's AI feature just can't get it right (https://www.mindstream.news/p/apple-s-ai-feature-just-can-t-get-it-right) Texas Sues Allstate Over Its Collection of Driver Data (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/13/technology/texas-allstate-driver-data-lawsuit.html) Mastodon's CEO and creator is handing control to a new nonprofit organization (https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/13/24342603/mastodon-non-profit-ownership-ceo-eugen-rochko) Nonsense DirecTV to offer 'MySports,' a smaller streaming package of 40 channels (https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6059981/2025/01/14/directv-mysports-small-channel-package/?source=freedailyemail&campaign=601983&userId=56655) Drake Sues His Label, Calling Kendrick Lamar's ‘Not Like Us' Defamatory (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/15/arts/music/drake-kendrick-lamar-lawsuit-not-like-us.html) Hanging Out at Starbucks? You Now Need to Order Something (https://www.wsj.com/business/hospitality/starbucks-new-cafe-policy-dining-room-e9ab07bf) Listener Feedback Capture AI's Low-Hanging Fruit with Agents (https://bweagle.medium.com/capture-ais-low-hanging-fruit-with-agents-904b00eb6860) The Ethics of Using AI Tools at Work (https://www.thecloudcast.net/2025/01/the-ethics-of-using-ai-tools-at-work.html) ****## Conferences CfgMgmtCamp (https://cfgmgmtcamp.org/ghent2025/), February 2-5, 2025. Civo Navigate North America (https://www.civo.com/navigate/north-america), San Francisco, Feb 10-11, 2025 DevOpsDayLA (https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/22x/events/devopsday-la) at SCALE22x (https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/22x), March 6-9, 2025, discount code DEVOP SDT News & Community Join our Slack community (https://softwaredefinedtalk.slack.com/join/shared_invite/zt-1hn55iv5d-UTfN7mVX1D9D5ExRt3ZJYQ#/shared-invite/email) Email the show: questions@softwaredefinedtalk.com (mailto:questions@softwaredefinedtalk.com) Free stickers: Email your address to stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com (mailto:stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com) Follow us on social media: Twitter (https://twitter.com/softwaredeftalk), Threads (https://www.threads.net/@softwaredefinedtalk), Mastodon (https://hachyderm.io/@softwaredefinedtalk), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/software-defined-talk/), BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/softwaredefinedtalk.com) Watch us on: Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/sdtpodcast), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi3OJPV6h9tp-hbsGBLGsDQ/featured), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/softwaredefinedtalk/), TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@softwaredefinedtalk) Book offer: Use code SDT for $20 off "Digital WTF" by Coté (https://leanpub.com/digitalwtf/c/sdt) Sponsor the show (https://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/ads): ads@softwaredefinedtalk.com (mailto:ads@softwaredefinedtalk.com) Recommendations Brandon: Capital One Café (https://www.capitalone.com/local/) Matt: The WELL: Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky: State of the World 2025 (https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/551/Bruce-Sterling-and-Jon-Lebkowsky-page01.html) Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service logo (https://3capesgearandgourmet.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Parks-Tasmania.gif) Coté: Splatoon (https://splatoon.nintendo.com/) Photo Credits Header (https://unsplash.com/photos/a-room-with-broken-windows-XNiNhOjgezE) Artwork (https://unsplash.com/photos/a-room-with-broken-windows-XNiNhOjgezE)

Say thanks and learn more about our podcast sponsor Omnisend. I'm sure we're all glad that year of WordPress is behind us.WordCamp US 2024 marked the start of a transformative era for the culture of WordPressers—a situation that thrust the community and the greater ecosystem into a tailspin with widespread uncertainty and instability across various sectors.As of this writing, we're still unsure how the lawsuit between Matt Mullenweg/Automattic vs WP Engine will fully play out. While we witness the dust settle and find our new normal, here are the ways I think WordPress will change over the year 2025.1. Automattic continues to rip off the band-aidI think we can all agree that since the inception of Gutenberg, there hasn't been a major “Wow!” moment for WordPress.Usability has improved, and some cool concepts have shipped, but nothing showstopping has graced our wp-admin dashboards. It's a two-sided coin, really:A stable tool for publishing? Yep.Buzzworthy or exciting for the outside world—including our closed-source competitors? Nope.Automattic needs to stay relevant, charm investors, and keep building cool stuff.That's hard enough for any product company—let alone an open-source product company. It boils down to marketing and awareness, which WordPress has always struggled with.Even if Gutenberg was welcomed with open arms, excitement for building with blocks and using WordPress for your next website project was still necessary.I believe that for Matt/Automattic to steer the ship back to relevancy, he needed to pull this entire operation back under full control. Lines needed to be drawn—and they certainly were in 2024.I noticed a “different” tone when Mullenweg appeared on WP Product Talk earlier in 2024. The change was coming back then. Did I think it would be the ‘scorched Earth nuclear‘ approach we witnessed? No.You wouldn't be wrong if you argued that Mullenweg has been trending in this direction for years, but it seemed like 2024 was filled with far too many distractions: a flailing Tumblr acquisition or spending tens of millions on messenger apps.What about focusing on WordPress?I've predicted that, in the future, we'll visit WordPress.org and find: “The best way to experience WordPress is at WordPress.com or by hosting WordPress powered by Jetpack.” And then somewhere far below that H1, you'll find in small text: “Click here to download WordPress for free.”In the short term, ripping off the band-aid to let the world know Matt's in charge is one step closer to that reality. One step closer and fewer distractions for Mullenweg—perhaps less community involvement, and much more of the mothership in control in 2025.2. Community -> CommunitiesThe WordPress community as we knew it is not coming back.You're either for or against Automattic, using the project or spinning up your own fork, meme'ing us on X, or you've already quit the whole thing and are riding off into the sunset on a new CMS.I'm still left wondering: What Would Josepha Do?There have been two public opportunities for Mary Hubbard, the new Executive Director of WordPress, to share her plans for the community. Both appearances that left me with more questions than answers.On a live stream with Mullenweg, Hubbard mentioned not wanting to be a “Josepha 2.0.” Totally understandable! No one wants to be a 2.0 of their predecessor. However, the North Star held by the previous ED was shining bright with the desire to help WordPress thrive.“Help WordPress thrive.” A call to action we could all rally around.In the State of the Word 2024, Hubbard opened with: “I am deeply passionate about defending and celebrating WordPress.” And this is where—I believe—the community begins to fracture.Is WordPress truly under attack from external forces (specifically private equity), or is it just suffocating from within?On paper, PE consuming more of WordPress isn't a good thing. From what I've witnessed in the traditional tech space, they don't care much for community investment either. The playbook is to grow the asset, sell the asset, and keep the revolving door of the portfolio moving.However, I don't agree with Matt/Automattic turning the community into cannon fodder—something that has done more damage in a fiscal quarter than if Silver Lake sold WP Engine to Wix.We, the community, could have been the biggest advocates for Mullenweg's change, but instead, we were tossed aside (and continued to be badgered) regardless of tenure or contribution.This is why we'll see more micro-communities pop up around WordPress through 2025. People fall out of love with WordPress as a “place to be,” and WordPress just gets tossed into the toolbox alongside Mailchimp and Google Apps.Transforming the experience from an open-source project backed by a global community into a free website builder by Automattic.Over 2025, WordPress will go from one big community to a decentralized collection of users who care less about the mission of open source and more about building their websites.3. Playground is the future for WordPressAs sure as the iPhone gets 10% better year after year, so does the software of WordPress.So yes, that's part of this prediction: WordPress, the software, does get better—but probably not by all that much.Playground will start to set an important stage for WordPress—one that I think is needed for the long-term survivability (and interest) of the project. To stay competitive, relevant, and easily accessible, the Playground will take center stage. Here's why:As I explored other software in 2024, specifically other CMS apps, no other website allowed me to try their software hands-on in the browser without installing or registering, like WordPress can.Even if you argue that WordPress is monolithic, uses old technologies, and generally can't get out of its own way, I don't see any other tech stack solving the complete stack like WordPress does—website builder, theme layer, drag-and-drop design, publishing, plugins, an ecosystem, etc.It's a real lightbulb moment when you put that power instantly into the hands of someone looking to learn, build, or publish online without friction.Playground allows you to build out a custom WordPress instance, save the blueprint...

Wordpress, yksi maailman suosituimmista julkaisuohjelmistoista, on avointa lähdekoodia, mutta juuri nyt sen kohtalo tuntuu olevan yhden ihmisen näpeissä. Matt Mullenweg on sen alkuperäinen kehittäjä ja nykyinen johtohahmo, jonka Automattic-yhtiö on isoissa riidoissa WP Engine -yhtiön kanssa.Miten yritysten väliset erimielisyydet liittyvät avoimen lähdekoodin hankkeisiin? Eikö ohjelmiston vapauden pitänyt suojata juuri tämänkaltaisilta epäselvyyksiltä? Vai onko sitten mahdollista, että ihmisten mielenliikkeillä on enemmän valtaa kuin ohjelmistojen lisensseillä?Mikäli haluat kuulla Vikasietotilaa joka viikko, meillä on sinulle hyviä uutisia! Joka toinen viikko ilmestyvien ilmaisjaksojen lisäksi teemme väliviikkoina Pikasietotila-jaksoja, jotka ovat maksavien asiakkaiden lisäetu. Lisätietoja ja tilausohjeet löydät Supporting Cast -sivuiltamme. Maksulliset jaksot voi kuunnella millä tahansa soittimella – siis myös esimerkiksi Spotifystä –, mutta vaihtoehtoisesti voit tilata Vikasietotilan lisäjaksot myös suoraan Applen podcast-palvelusta.VinkitPanun vinkki on Zen Browser.Karin vinkki on Crypto is for Criming.MateriaalitJakson äänittämisen jälkeen on tapahtunut vielä lisää: Mullenweg julisti yksipuolisesti WordPress.orgiin joulutauon ja Joost de Valk esitteli vaihtoehtoisen vision jatkoa varten.Matt Mullenweg: WordCamp US & Ecosystem Thinking (syyskuu)Matt Mullenweg: My Freedom of Speech (lokakuu)David Hanssonin kritiikki Linus Torvaldsin tauko johtajuudessaGhostin malliLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wordpress, yksi maailman suosituimmista julkaisuohjelmistoista, on avointa lähdekoodia, mutta juuri nyt sen kohtalo tuntuu olevan yhden ihmisen näpeissä. Matt Mullenweg on sen alkuperäinen kehittäjä ja nykyinen johtohahmo, jonka Automattic-yhtiö on isoissa riidoissa WP Engine -yhtiön kanssa. Miten yritysten väliset erimielisyydet liittyvät avoimen lähdekoodin hankkeisiin? Eikö ohjelmiston vapauden pitänyt suojata juuri tämänkaltaisilta epäselvyyksiltä? Vai onko sitten mahdollista, että ihmisten mielenliikkeillä on enemmän valtaa kuin ohjelmistojen lisensseillä? Mikäli haluat kuulla Vikasietotilaa joka viikko, meillä on sinulle hyviä uutisia! Joka toinen viikko ilmestyvien ilmaisjaksojen lisäksi teemme väliviikkoina Pikasietotila-jaksoja, jotka ovat maksavien asiakkaiden lisäetu. Lisätietoja ja tilausohjeet löydät Supporting Cast -sivuiltamme. Maksulliset jaksot voi kuunnella millä tahansa soittimella – siis myös esimerkiksi Spotifystä –, mutta vaihtoehtoisesti voit tilata Vikasietotilan lisäjaksot myös suoraan Applen podcast-palvelusta. Vinkit Panun vinkki on Zen Browser. Karin vinkki on Crypto is for Criming. Materiaalit Jakson äänittämisen jälkeen on tapahtunut vielä lisää: Mullenweg julisti yksipuolisesti WordPress.orgiin joulutauon ja Joost de Valk esitteli vaihtoehtoisen vision jatkoa varten. Matt Mullenweg: WordCamp US & Ecosystem Thinking (syyskuu) Matt Mullenweg: My Freedom of Speech (lokakuu) David Hanssonin kritiikki Linus Torvaldsin tauko johtajuudessa Ghostin malli Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's Going To Be OK! Kevin Indig jumped into the host seat for Erin while he was away!  Kevin and Jacob discuss the DOJ's continued push for Google's break-up of products, specifically Google Chrome. They dissect Google's new Search Console features and their broader implications for data control and AI dominance. They also critique Google's latest moves, from real-time site notifications that miss the mark to the continued saga of Mullenweg's crusade against WPEngine with an update to his WPEngine Tracker site.  Don't miss out on Jacob's witty commentary and Kevin's sharp insights as we navigate the whirling winds of tech regulation, Google's evolving strategies, and the future of digital search.  News from the EDGE: [00:02:12] Mullenweg is updating the WP Engine Tracker website again… [00:08:10] Recommendations are now live in Google Search Console [00:10:58] EDGE of the Web Title Sponsor: Site Strategics [00:12:04] The DOJ's Plan to Bring Down Google's Monopoly AI Blitz: [00:22:50] ChatGPT Search Fails Attribution Test, Misquotes News Sources [00:29:08] EDGE of the Web Sponsor: InLinks Barry Blast from Search Engine Roundtable: [00:30:12] Google Sitelinks Search Box Now Really Gone [00:31:20] Google On Giving Prior Notice To Search Penalties [00:38:03] 21 Years Covering The Search Industry Thanks to our sponsors! Site Strategics https://edgeofthewebradio.com/site Inlinks https://edgeofthewebradio.com/inlinks Follow Us: X: @ErinSparks X: @Kevin_Indig X: @TheMann00 X: @EDGEWebRadio

What is Google's latest shake-up? The Page Experience Report's exit from Search Console. This week, we are joined by the insightful Lidia Infante from SurveyMonkey, as we explore the headlines in the SEO and Marketing world. The DOJ has some audacious demands for Google to sell Chrome, and ads have finally hit the AI Overview pages: We even unpack the drama-filled lawsuit between WP Engine and Automattic, questioning the ethical boundaries of open-source communities. This is the stuff that only Andy Cohen can unravel at this point.  Ever wondered about the environmental costs of AI? Lidia hits us with some eye-opening facts while we dissect Google's claim of reducing power consumption by 90%. Don't miss our banter over volatile localization signals and ranking shifts during Google's November Core Update! News from the EDGE: [00:04:28] Google Search Console Drops Page Experience Report [00:09:59] Ads Now Being Seen on Google AI Overviews [00:18:25] EDGE of the Web Title Sponsor: Site Strategics [00:19:46] WP Engine Intensifies Legal Dispute With Automattic [00:28:54] DOJ is Pushing for a Sell-Off of Google's Chrome Browser [00:37:11] EDGE of the Web Sponsor: InLinks  Barry Blast from Search Engine Roundtable: [00:38:28] Google Also Cautions On Using Google People Also Ask For Content Ideas [00:39:54] Google November 2024 Core Update Movement - Slow But For Some Massive Bonus Coverage: [00:42:19] Freaky AI News: Human, Please die. Thanks to our sponsors! Site Strategics https://edgeofthewebradio.com/site Inlinks https://edgeofthewebradio.com/inlinks Follow Us: X: @ErinSparks X: @LidiaInfanteM X: @TheMann00 X: @EDGEWebRadio

WordPress, la piattaforma che ha reso super facile fare un blog, sta avendo qualche grana con un'azienda, mentre il suo creatore fa un po' il bello e il cattivo tempo, tanto l'ha fatto lui.Tutti i miei link: https://linktr.ee/br1brownThe WordPress vs. WP Engine drama, explained | TechCrunchWordPress CEO Matt Mullenweg goes 'nuclear' on Silver Lake, WP EngineThe Inevitability of Mixing Open Source and Money | Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and WritingsMy strange experiences with Automattic: Part 3 – aldavigdis.devTELEGRAM - INSTAGRAM Se ti va supportami https://it.tipeee.com/br1brown

This week, we talk about Anthropic's new AI agent, cloud exits, and why BMC is splitting up. Plus, a quick update on the WordPress drama and some thoughts on Amsterdam's autumn weather. Watch the YouTube Live Recording of Episode (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNQ8Bf-lfys) 490 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNQ8Bf-lfys) Runner-up Titles The Abyss Looks Into You ROI Stuff RTO Agent Rundown AI Agents The AI agents have arrived (https://www.platformer.news/anthropic-ai-agents-computer-use-consequences/?ref=platformer-newsletter) Amazon-backed Anthropic debuts AI agents that can do complex tasks, racing against OpenAI, Microsoft and Google (https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/22/anthropic-announces-ai-agents-for-complex-tasks-racing-openai.html) Amazon-backed Anthropic debuts AI agents that can do complex tasks, racing against OpenAI, Microsoft and Google (https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/22/anthropic-announces-ai-agents-for-complex-tasks-racing-openai.html) Wordpress Open source royalty and mad kings (https://world.hey.com/dhh/open-source-royalty-and-mad-kings-a8f79d16?utm_source=changelog-news) Casey Newton on Mullenweg (https://www.threads.net/@crumbler/post/DBHn6SIzPhd?xmt=AQGzYYKRz15k-2EYpfAqrwLcuO5a2HhwzbUZBCbGWhnvsg) Employees Describe an Environment of Paranoia and Fear Inside Automattic Over WordPress Chaos (https://www.404media.co/automattic-buyout-offer-wordpress-matt-mullenweg/) Cloud Exits Warren Buffett's GEICO repatriates work from the cloud (https://www.thestack.technology/warren-buffetts-geico-repatriates-work-from-the-cloud-continues-ambitious-infrastructure-overhaul/) Basecamp-maker 37Signals says its “cloud exit” will save it $10M over 5 years (https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/10/basecamp-maker-37signals-says-its-cloud-exit-will-save-it-10m-over-5-years/) There's a lot of private cloud out there (https://newsletter.cote.io/p/theres-a-lot-of-private-cloud-out) BMC BMC Announces the Creation of Two Independent Companies (https://www.bmc.com/newsroom/releases/bmc-announces-the-creation-of-two-independent-companies.html) Doubling down on AI and splitting at BMC Connect 2024 (https://siliconangle.com/2024/10/21/doubling-ai-splitting-bmc-connect-2024/) Relevant to your Interests #1046 OpenCost Incubation Proposal (https://github.com/cncf/toc/pull/1046) US Weighs Google Breakup in Historic Big Tech Antitrust Case (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-09/us-says-it-s-weighing-google-breakup-as-remedy-in-monopoly-case) ChatGPT Crossed a Revenue Milestone and (Re)Started a Gold Rush (https://appfigures.com/resources/insights/20241004/4-chatgpt-crossed-a-revenue-milestone-and-(re)started-a-gold-rush) Ask HN: What happens to “.io” TLD after UK gives back the Chagos Islands? (https://simonwillison.net/2024/Oct/3/what-happens-to-io-after-uk-gives-back-chagos/) From AOL Time Warner to DirecTV and Dish: 20 years of media mergers (https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/4/24259360/directv-dish-merger-timeline-aol-timewarner) AT&T claims VMware offered it a 1,050 percent price rise (https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/att_broadcom_filings_update/) CEO Kurian: 'When I Started, Most People Told Me We Didn't Have a Chance' (https://accelerationeconomy.com/cloud-wars/ceo-kurian-when-i-started-most-people-told-me-we-didnt-have-a-chance/) AMD looks to new chips to grab share from Intel, Nvidia (https://www.axios.com/2024/10/10/amd-new-chips-intel-nvidia-ai) The list of major companies requiring employees to return to the office (https://www.businessinsider.com/companies-requiring-return-to-office-rto-mandate) Avoiding a Geopolitical Open Source Apocalypse (https://thenewstack.io/avoiding-a-geopolitical-open-source-apocalypse/) Overview of current needs and possibilities in enterprise-y FinOps (https://amalgaminsights.com/2024/10/14/the-evolution-and-expansion-of-it-finops/) Ward Christensen, BBS inventor and architect of our online age, dies at age 78 (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/ward-christensen-bbs-inventor-and-architect-of-our-online-age-dies-at-age-78/) Eric Schmidt on electronic warfare (https://x.com/tsarnick/status/1846300559374274904) 700 Ubisoft workers go on three-day strike to protest company's new return-to-office policy (https://gameworldobserver.com/2024/10/16/ubisoft-strike-remote-work-over-700-workers) Amazon's cloud boss on Thursday told employees who are unhappy with the company's new five-day in-office mandate they can leave for other companies. (https://www.threads.net/@cnbc/post/DBQ_E_gOuJw?xmt=AQGzlsObxUnGC2bk5CE_t4sW-QL_NQDcsH5QyN3SuCe43Q) Invisible text that AI chatbots understand and humans can't? Yep, it's a thing. (https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/10/ai-chatbots-can-read-and-write-invisible-text-creating-an-ideal-covert-channel/) Tesla Caught Using a Lazy Video Editing Trick to Make Its "Autonomous" Robots Look More Capable (https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-sped-up-video-optimus-robots) How Google is changing to compete with ChatGPT (https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/18/24273748/google-deepmind-gemini-search-chaptgpt-meta-ai-interview) Perplexity is reportedly looking to fundraise at an $8B valuation (https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/20/perplexity-is-reportedly-looking-to-fundraise-at-an-8b-valuation/) Sophos to Acquire Secureworks to Accelerate Cybersecurity Services and Technology for Organizations Worldwide (https://www.secureworks.com/about/press/sophos-to-acquire-secureworks) Chick-fil-A is releasing its own entertainment app, with family-friendly shows and podcasts (https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/21/chick-fil-a-to-release-entertainment-app-play-with-shows-and-podcasts.html) Passwords have problems, but passkeys have more (https://world.hey.com/dhh/passwords-have-problems-but-passkeys-have-more-95285df9) Foursquare is killing its city guide app to focus on the check-in app Swarm (https://www.engadget.com/social-media/foursquare-is-killing-its-city-guide-app-to-focus-on-the-check-in-app-swarm-191054153.html) Citi reaps rewards from modernization investments (https://www.ciodive.com/news/citi-bank-digital-transformation-returns-cloud-legacy-applications/729929/) Comic Sans Got the Last Laugh (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/10/comic-sans-debate/680319/?gift=201cWZnM2XBz2eP81zy0pGR9oxa-0Q1yRNNAyEiZV9s&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share) How Wiz Became the Fastest Software Company to Hit $500M & Its Path to $1B (https://softwareanalyst.substack.com/p/the-wiz-playbook-how-they-dominated) In a global first, quantum computers crack RSA and AES data encryption (https://www.thebrighterside.news/post/in-a-global-first-quantum-computers-crack-rsa-and-aes-data-encryption/) Google Executive Overseeing Search and Advertising Leaves Role (https://www.wsj.com/tech/google-executive-overseeing-search-and-advertising-leaves-role-7aaa7906) Google replaces executive in charge of Search and advertising (https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/17/google-replaces-executive-in-charge-of-search-and-advertising/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADaAH8SfXbYvJfExfrdTBCk3FQFLK5Tq4uwcyTdvNqH_if1EMb7BiTaIutkBk7E_gi_XolToB8zShW4zMyhXnB3msBJgykhphfBnPzeDtrLww3XP-wNSyUDOl5UIOKZayfYH4AiVuRcNK835OQmS1p-grIHDeizDm3nlSEB9e55j) Concerns Raised Over Bitwarden Moving Further Away From Open-Source (https://www.phoronix.com/news/Bitwarden-Open-Source-Concerns) Intel and AMD are unlikely allies in new x86 ecosystem advisory group – "we'll remain fierce competitors" (https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intel-and-amd-forge-x86-ecosystem-advisory-group-that-aims-to-ensure-a-unified-isa-moving-forward) The RVA23 profile is now ratified, so RISC-V gets satisfied (https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/23/rva23_profile_ratified/) Twitter users flock to Bluesky as 500,000 join in a day amid controversial blocking changes (https://www.financialexpress.com/life/technology-twitter-users-flock-to-bluesky-as-500000-join-in-a-day-amid-controversial-blocking-changes-3643898/) Nvidia's Blackwell AI Processors Are Sold Out For Next 12 Months (https://www.investors.com/news/technology/nvidia-stock-nvda-blackwell-on-schedule/) Announcing Amazon ElastiCache for Valkey - AWS (https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2024/10/amazon-elasticache-valkey/) Nonsense What the Waffle House Index says about Hurricane Milton (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/what-the-waffle-house-index-says-about-hurricane-milton) Waffle House (@WaffleHouse) on X (https://x.com/WaffleHouse/status/1844438764547932507) The Hustlers Who Make $6,000 a Month by Gaming Citi Bikes (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/19/nyregion/citi-bike-scam-nyc.html?unlocked_article_code=1.RE4.D83k.4gVrI1ujtLw4&smid=url-share) The VW ID. Buzz was worth the seven-year wait (https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/10/driving-the-2025-vw-id-buzz-was-worth-the-seven-year-wait/) Listener Feedback World's Largest Buffalo Monument (https://discoverjamestownnd.com/fun-things-to-do-in-jamestown-nd/all-things-buffalo/worlds-largest-buffalo-monument/) 20+ of Canada's Largest Roadside Attractions (https://www.readersdigest.ca/travel/canada/canadas-10-biggest-things/) Our big things vs their big things (https://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/our-big-things-vs-their-big-things/HXA3VDO7GFRWPH3WJ2MXX3JRD4/) Conferences VMware Explore Barcelona (https://www.vmware.com/explore/eu), Nov 4-7, 2024, Coté speaking. GoTech World (https://www.gotech.world/), Bucharest, Nov 12- 13, 2204, Coté speaking. SREday Amsterdam (https://sreday.com/2024-amsterdam/), Nov 21, 2024, Coté speaking (https://sreday.com/2024-amsterdam/Michael_Cote_VMwarePivotal_We_Fear_Change), 20% off with code SRE20DAY DevOpsDayLA (https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/22x/events/devopsday-la) at SCALE22x (https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/22x), March 6-9, 2025, discount code DEVOP SDT News & Community Join our Slack community (https://softwaredefinedtalk.slack.com/join/shared_invite/zt-1hn55iv5d-UTfN7mVX1D9D5ExRt3ZJYQ#/shared-invite/email) Email the show: questions@softwaredefinedtalk.com (mailto:questions@softwaredefinedtalk.com) Free stickers: Email your address to stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com (mailto:stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com) Follow us on social media: Twitter (https://twitter.com/softwaredeftalk), Threads (https://www.threads.net/@softwaredefinedtalk), Mastodon (https://hachyderm.io/@softwaredefinedtalk), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/software-defined-talk/), BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/softwaredefinedtalk.com) Watch us on: Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/sdtpodcast), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi3OJPV6h9tp-hbsGBLGsDQ/featured), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/softwaredefinedtalk/), TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@softwaredefinedtalk) Book offer: Use code SDT for $20 off "Digital WTF" by Coté (https://leanpub.com/digitalwtf/c/sdt) Sponsor the show (https://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/ads): ads@softwaredefinedtalk.com (mailto:ads@softwaredefinedtalk.com) Recommendations Brandon: Tailscale (https://tailscale.com) Ozlo Sleepbuds hands-on: resurrected and I've slept so good (https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/22/24275875/ozlo-sleepbuds-hands-on-bose-wearables-sleep-tracking) Coté: Hire Caleb (https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7250088425121267713/) Marques (https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7250088425121267713/) as an Cybersecurity Intern (Coté's N (https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7250088425121267713/)ephew (https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7250088425121267713/)) (https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7250088425121267713/) (https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7250088425121267713/) What Artists Wear (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58999216-what-artists-wear), Charlie Porter (much better cover on Penguin edition (https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/314590/what-artists-wear-by-porter-charlie/9780141991252)) Photo Credits Header (https://unsplash.com/photos/conjunction-bridge-under-white-sky-1JWmFju8vVg) Artwork (https://unsplash.com/photos/black-and-white-robot-toy-on-red-wooden-table-zwd435-ewb4)

Google disabilita uBlock Origin. Le guerre di Wordpress. Piracy Shield blocca Google Drive. Shining e lo smart working. Le poste senza la posta. Queste e molte altre le notizie tech commentate nella puntata di questa settimana.Dallo studio distribuito di digitalia:Franco Solerio, Francesco Facconi, Giulio CupiniProduttori esecutivi:Fiorenzo Pilla, Alessandro Grossi, Nicola Gabriele Del Popolo, Nicola Gabriele Del Popolo, Marco Grechi, Manuel Zavatta, Angelo Travaglione, Nicola Fort, Luca Ongaro, Michele Francesco Falzarano, Arzigogolo, Donato Gravino, @Ppogo, Fabio Zappa, Andrea Nicola Vasile, Fabrizio Reina, Edoardo Volpi Kellerman, Giancarlo Audisio, Denis Grosso, Giorgio Puglisi, Paolo Bernardini, Fabio Brunelli, @Jh4Ckal, Alessandro Lago, Michele Olivieri, Anonimo S., Andrea Delise, Enrico Carangi, @Akagrinta, Andrea Giovacchini, Massimo Pollastri, Michele Bordoni, Enrico De Anna, Andrea Malesani, Roberto Medeossi, Letizia Calcinai, Daniele Bastianelli, Simone Magnaschi, Cristian Pastori, Umberto Marcello, Massimiliano Sgroi, Emanuele Libori, Davide Tinti, Matteo Beretta, Ligea Technology Di D'esposito Antonio, Andrea Guido, Idle Fellow, Nicola Grilli, Davide BelliaSponsor:Links:Google's Chrome Browser Starts Disabling uBlock OriginThe End of Indie Web Browsers: You Can (Not) CompeteResponse to DHHEnvironment of Paranoia and Fear Inside Automattic Over WordPress ChaosWhy World War WordPress Will End With A Zombie ForkStavolta Piracy Shield l'ha fatta grossa e ha bloccato Google DriveLa piattaforma nazionale anti pirateria ha bloccato Google Drive per erroreUnivideo: con DVD e Blu-ray il supporto rimane una certezzaSmart TV spione fanno screenshot di quello che vediamo per tracciarciFederal Trade Commission Announces Final Click-to-Cancel ruleiPhones: shouldn't water damage be covered under warranty?Water and other liquid damage to your iPhone or iPod isn't covered by warrantyWard Christensen BBS inventor and architect of our online age dies at age 78Column | Dont say vote: How Instagram hides your political postsTikTok is reportedly aware of its bad effects on teen usersThe AI Boom Has an Expiration Date - The AtlanticLa galleria astrofotografica di Matteo BerettaAstroArch su GitHubMillions of people are creating nude images of pretty much anyonemkbhd: companies use an AI-created rip of my voice to promote their productLies Wide ShutShining è il più grande film mai fatto sullo smartworkingPoste Italiane non vuole più spedire lettere e gestire bollettini.Gingilli del giorno:AmnesiaCapibaraZeroPanerai MuseoSupporta Digitalia, diventa produttore esecutivo.

Anton har för kanske första gången någonsin anteckningar för att komma ihåg allt som hänt i dramat vi tar oss igenom i dagens avsnitt. Det blir WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, att bränna förtroende, stämningar, en checkbox, open source och att sitta på flera stolar. Dessutom en hel del om varumärken, förtäckta hot, galna kungar, ett DHH-inspel och mycket annat. Om du gillar podden blir vi väldigt glada för en liten recension i iTunes eller en prenumeration på Spotify. Följ oss och säg hej på @asdfpodden på Instagram

This week, we discuss WordPress paying employees to quit, the perils of management by fear, and Matt shutting down his datacenter. Plus, the definitive top 5 ranking of Australia's iconic Big Things. Watch the YouTube Live Recording of Episode (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTYb9mUd38M) 488 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTYb9mUd38M) Runner-up Titles The Spirit of Open Source Debating ‘Benevolent' The Hero 1-Day Guy The Mullenweg Way He has Been Great for Podcasting Spider Vacuuming Rundown A Guide To 30 Of Australia's Iconic Big Things (https://www.australiantraveller.com/australia/most-iconic-big-things-of-australia/) More WordPress WordPress cofounder is paying employees to leave if they disagree with him (https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/4/24261931/wordpress-matt-mullenweg-automattic-employee-pay-package) The WordPress Saga: Does Matt Mullenwegg Want a Fork or Not? (https://thenewstack.io/the-wordpress-saga-does-matt-mullenwegg-wants-a-fork-or-not/) Automattic demanded web host pay $32M annually for using WordPress trademark (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/automattic-demanded-web-host-pay-32m-annually-for-using-wordpress-trademark/) WP Engine sues WordPress co-creator Mullenweg and Automattic, alleging abuse of power (https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/02/wp-engine-sues-automattic-and-wordpress-co-founder-matt-mullenweg/) Matt Mullenweg: ‘WordPress.org just belongs to me' (https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/4/24262232/matt-mullenweg-wordpress-org-wp-engine) Automattic Alignment (https://ma.tt/2024/10/alignment/) RTO or GFTO / Oxide (https://oxide.computer/podcasts/oxide-and-friends/2105673) Relevant to your Interests OpenAI's product focus raises safety concerns as key execs depart (https://www.axios.com/2024/10/02/chatgpt-openai-products-shift-profit) Wayback Machine integrated into Google search (https://boingboing.net/2024/09/26/wayback-machine-integrated-into-google-search.html) OpenStack Dalmatian debuts with better dashboard, security (https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/03/openstack_dalmatian/) Gmail adding redesigned summary cards to your inbox with ‘Happening soon' (https://9to5google.com/2024/10/02/gmail-summary-cards-happening-soon/) How I exited the cloud (https://rameerez.com/how-i-exited-the-cloud/) As data center usage heats up, Submer raises $55.5M to cool things down (https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/02/as-data-center-usage-heats-up-submer-raises-55-5m-to-cool-things-down/) Palmer Luckey, American Vulcan (https://www.tabletmag.com/feature/american-vulcan-palmer-luckey-anduril) A Look Back at Q2 '24 Public Cloud Software Earnings (https://cloudedjudgement.substack.com/p/a-look-back-at-q2-24-public-cloud?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=56878&post_id=149718363&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=2l9&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email) Google's AI search summaries officially have ads (https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/3/24260637/googles-ai-overview-ads-launch) OpenWrt One WiFi 6 router samples are now available for $89 - Liliputing (https://liliputing.com/openwrt-one-wifi-6-router-is-now-available-for-89/) Elastic CTO Shay Banon on suing AWS and returning to OSS (https://www.thestack.technology/the-big-interview-their-product-sucked-elastic-cto-shay-banon-on-suing-aws-and-returning-to-oss/) AWS CEO Matt Garman on generative AI, open source, and closing services (https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/06/aws-ceo-matt-garman-on-generative-ai-open-source-and-closing-services/) Bitcoin's inventor is a mystery. An HBO filmmaker thinks he found him. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/10/08/bitcoin-hbo-documentary-satoshi-nakamoto-identity/) HBO doc names Bitcoin creator suspect - who says ‘not me' (https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/09/satoshi_nakamoto_suspect_hbo_bitcoin/) Apple Tweaks Screen Recording App Permissions to Decrease Popup Frequency (https://www.macrumors.com/2024/10/07/apple-screen-recording-popup-update/) Nonsense Autonomous Ride-Hailing in Austin, Texas - Waymo (https://waymo.com/waymo-one-austin/) NYC Costco shoppers empty shelves in panic over port strike (https://nypost.com/2024/10/03/business/nyc-costco-shoppers-empty-shelves-in-panic-over-port-strike/) Conferences VMware Explore Barcelona (https://www.vmware.com/explore/eu), Nov 4-7, 2024, Coté speaking. GoTech World (https://www.gotech.world/), Bucharest, Nov 12- 13, 2204, Coté speaking. SREday Amsterdam (https://sreday.com/2024-amsterdam/), Nov 21, 2024, Coté speaking (https://sreday.com/2024-amsterdam/Michael_Cote_VMwarePivotal_We_Fear_Change), 20% off with code SRE20DAY DevOpsDayLA (https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/22x/events/devopsday-la) at SCALE22x (https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/22x), March 6-9, 2025, discount code DEVOP SDT News & Community Join our Slack community (https://softwaredefinedtalk.slack.com/join/shared_invite/zt-1hn55iv5d-UTfN7mVX1D9D5ExRt3ZJYQ#/shared-invite/email) Email the show: questions@softwaredefinedtalk.com (mailto:questions@softwaredefinedtalk.com) Free stickers: Email your address to stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com (mailto:stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com) Follow us on social media: Twitter (https://twitter.com/softwaredeftalk), Threads (https://www.threads.net/@softwaredefinedtalk), Mastodon (https://hachyderm.io/@softwaredefinedtalk), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/software-defined-talk/), BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/softwaredefinedtalk.com) Watch us on: Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/sdtpodcast), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi3OJPV6h9tp-hbsGBLGsDQ/featured), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/softwaredefinedtalk/), TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@softwaredefinedtalk) Book offer: Use code SDT for $20 off "Digital WTF" by Coté (https://leanpub.com/digitalwtf/c/sdt) Sponsor the show (https://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/ads): ads@softwaredefinedtalk.com (mailto:ads@softwaredefinedtalk.com) Recommendations Brandon: REI Bike Maintenance (https://www.rei.com/stores/bike-shop) AppleCare+ for iPhone (https://www.apple.com/support/products/iphone/) JohnnyTankless (https://johnnytankless.com) Matt: This Is How You Lose the Time War (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1534430997/) Photo Credits Header (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Australian_Icon_%27_The_Big_Banana%27_located_in_Coffs_Harbour,_Australian_icon_(cropped).jpg) Artwork (https://unsplash.com/photos/green-yellow-and-blue-hot-air-balloon-on-the-air-during-daytime-b5QC1ugPRK8)

Show DescriptionWe're getting some feelings out about WordPress and Matt Mullenweg vs WP Engine drama, as well as the Web Components conversation that happened this past week. Listen on Website →Links WP Engine sues WordPress co-creator Mullenweg and Automattic, alleging abuse of power | TechCrunch Automattic demanded a cut of WP Engine's revenue before starting WordPress battle - The Verge WP Engine Banned from Using WordPress.org Resources – WP Tavern The WordPress vs. WP Engine drama, explained | TechCrunch Matt Mullenweg: ‘WordPress.org just belongs to me' - The Verge WP Engine Term Sheet Theo and Matt Mullenweg Matt Discusses WordPress WCUS 2024 Q&A Modern WordPress Learning Automattic | Five for the Future | WordPress.org Automattic Alignment Matt Mullenweg Calls Out GoDaddy Matt Mullenweg Charitable Contributions Lee Wittlinger Location WebOps Platform WP Engine Hacker Interview WordPress.com WordPress Hosting Web Components Present Web Components Are Not the Future Sponsors

Er is ruzie tussen Wordpress en WP Engine. De medebedenker van Wordpress en CEO van Automatic, Matthew Mullenweg, is op oorlogspad. Mullenweg is van mening dat te veel bedrijven profiteren van Wordpress (het open source project) zonder dat ze daaraan bijdragen. Vooral WP Engine moet het ontgelden. Dat bedrijf verdient een goed belegde boterham met managed Wordpress hosting. In deze aflevering van Techzine Talks bespreken we de ruzie tussen de partijen, maar trekken we de discussie ook wat breder richting de krachten die spelen in de open-source-wereld. Wordpress wordt uitgegeven onder een #GPL-licentie wat betekent dat je er commercieel geld mee kan verdienen, zonder dat je verplicht bent een euro of dollar te betalen aan licentiekosten. #Mullenweg vindt dat op zich geen probleem, als organisatie dan maar wel bijdragen aan het project. Er zijn echter ook bedrijven die het enkel gebruiken voor het leveren van bijvoorbeeld een managed hosting dienst, maar niets teruggeven. #GoDaddy en #WPEngine zijn hier voorbeelden van, maar vooral WP Engine moet het ontgelden. Mullenweg is zelfs zover gegaan dat alle klanten van WP Engine zijn afgesloten van Wordpress.org. Hierdoor konden klanten van WP Engine tijdelijk geen updates of nieuwe Wordpress plugins downloaden en installeren.Open source / source availableEigenlijk is dit een discussie die voortborduurt op de hele open source / source available discussie van een jaar geleden. Toen onder meer #RedHat, Elastic Search en Hashicorp zich druk maakten over commerciële uitbaters van hun open source projecten. Red Hat besloot de broncode van #RHEL achter een betaalmuur te zetten en Elastic koos een andere #opensource licentie. Alles om meer controle te krijgen of licentie-inkomsten van partijen die open source projecten commercialiseren.Concurrent afknijpenMet Wordpress is er een soortgelijke discussie. Wat deze discussie echter wel enigszins saillant maakt, is dat #Automatic ook eigenaar is van Wordpress.com. Dat is de managed hosting oplossing van #Wordpress zelf. Mullenweg is dus de CEO van het bedrijf dat de grootste concurrent is van WP Engine. Doordat Automattic ook de grootste vinger in de pap heeft bij het Wordpress open source project, lopen de belangen door elkaar. Het geheel komt op z'n minst niet zo sjiek over en op z'n ergst is er sprake van te veel macht bij een persoon/organisatie. Hoe de vork in de steel zit, hoor je in deze nieuwste aflevering van Techzine Talks.

OpenAI raised their round, and it basically broke all the records. The whole Wordpress mess has gotten so crazy that WPEngine is suing. Using Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses to dox people in real time. And you'll never guess the reason why you're about to see more ads on streaming video. Hint: you'll endure it.Sponsors:Lumen.me/rideLinks:OpenAI raises $6.6 billion in largest VC round ever (Axios)OpenAI asks investors not to back rival start-ups such as Elon Musk's xAI (Financial Times)OpenAI feels competitors breathing down its neck (Financial Times)WP Engine sues WordPress co-creator Mullenweg and Automattic, alleging abuse of power (TechCrunch)Someone Put Facial Recognition Tech onto Meta's Smart Glasses to Instantly Dox Strangers (404Media)Spotify adds a new, automatically updating playlist for offline listening (TechCrunch)Amazon to increase number of advertisements on Prime Video (Financial Times)Venture Dealmaking Reflects Selective Tastes of Investors (Bloomberg)See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

OpenAI's $6.6B funding round is the largest in history, iPadOS 18 still not release for M4 iPad Pro, what's going on with Apple software, possible October Apple event, CNN and The Verge possible paywalls, and Jason takes Tesla's Full Self Driving on a 250-mile road trip.Sponsored by: Rogue AmoebaAudio Hijack is simply the best way to record audio on your Mac. Through the end of October, get 20% off Audio Hijack or any Rogue Amoeba bundle when you visit: macaudio.com/primarytech and use the promo code: TECHXX Watch on YouTube!Subscribe and watch our weekly episodes plus bonus clips at: https://youtu.be/KOUwHr_yu3MJoin the CommunityDiscuss new episodes, start your own conversation, and join the Primary Tech community here: social.primarytech.fmSupport the showJoin our member community and get an ad-free versions of the show, plus exclusive bonus episodes every week! Subscribe directly in Apple Podcasts or here: primarytech.memberful.com/joinReach out:Stephen's YouTube Channel@stephenrobles on Threads@stephenrobles on XStephen on MastodonJason's Inc.com Articles@jasonaten on Threads@JasonAten on XJason on MastodonWe would also appreciate a 5-star rating and review in Apple Podcasts and SpotifyPodcast artwork with help from Basic Apple Guy. Some chapter art from 9to5Mac and MacRumors.Those interested in sponsoring the show can reach out to us at: podcast@primarytech.fmLinks from the showOpenAI just raised $6.6 billion to build ever-larger AI models - The VergeThe Crunchbase Megadeals BoardiPadOS 18 pulled for M4 iPad Pro after bricked devices complaintsApple pulls watchOS 11.1 beta 3 after users report frozen devices - 9to5MacExcessive Heat Warning alert on iPhone? - 9to5MacWhat to Expect From an Apple Event in October: iPad Mini 7, Redesigned Mac Mini, and More - MacRumorsOura Ring 4 smart ring announced for $349, releases Oct. 15Christian Selig's Juno app for streaming YouTube on the Vision Pro has been removed - The VergeRogue Amoeba | Audio Hijack: Record Any Audio on MacOSAmazon will “ramp up” Prime Video ads in 2025CNN will start locking some articles behind a paywall - The VergeOn The Verge of a PaywallWP Engine sues WordPress co-creator Mullenweg and Automattic, alleging abuse of power | TechCrunchEpic is suing Google — again — and now Samsung, too - The VergeMicrosoft Office 2024 now available without a subscription for PC and Mac | ZDNETCroissant: A Beautifully-Designed App for Cross-Posting to Multiple Social Media Accounts - MacStoriesI Took a 250 Mile Roadtrip to Chicago With Tesla's Full Self Driving (00:00) - Intro (01:00) - iPhone 16 Colors (04:47) - OpenAI Raises $6.6B (12:10) - Apple Intelligence Rollout (17:59) - What is Happening to Apple Software (25:10) - M4 October Apple Event (32:57) - Juno  Vision Pro App (35:34) - Sponsor: Audio Hijack (38:50) - Amazon Prime Adding Ads (44:14) - CNN Testing Paywalls (56:49) - WordPress Drama (59:32) - Epic Suing Google (01:00:35) - Office One-Time Purchase (01:03:32) - Jason Tries Full Self Driving ★ Support this podcast ★

Stanley Is Releasing Collectible Tumblers Every Day This Week to Honor Different Decades of Barbie EssilorLuxottica extends smart glasses partnership with Meta Sam Altman catapults past founder mode into 'god mode' with latest AI post AI conversation about Jeff's book The Paris show Exclusive: Meta's AI chatbot to start speaking in the voices of Judi Dench, John Cena, others, source says Google TV adds several more free channels including The Bob Ross Channel YouTube confirms your pause screen is now fair game for ads Google's passkey syncing makes it easier to move on from passwords New Cloudflare Tools Let Sites Detect and Block AI Bots for Free Google Photos is getting a redesigned video editor Google's Gemini AI might soon appear in your corporate Workspace Google Earth AI eliminates clouds Ahead of Gemini coming to Google Buds, Hey Google & Voice Match Settings Change on Headphones Quote Origin: I Had Exactly Four Seconds To Hot Up the Disintegrator, and Google Had Told Me It Wasn't Enough Project Analyzing Human Language Usage Shuts Down Because 'Generative AI Has Polluted the Data' Comedian John Mulaney brutally roasts SF techies at Dreamforce Marques Brownlee says 'I hear you' after fans criticize his new wallpaper app Cards Against Humanity sues Elon Musk's SpaceX for trespassing McDonald's touchscreen kiosks were feared as job killers. Instead, something surprising happened Mullenweg calls WP Engine a 'cancer to WordPress' and urges community to switch providers Introducing HP Print AI, Industry's First Intelligent Print Experiences The 90s Executive Yes Man More Americans – especially young adults – are regularly getting news on TikTok Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Paris Martineau Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-google. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: bitwarden.com/twit cachefly.com/twit

Stanley Is Releasing Collectible Tumblers Every Day This Week to Honor Different Decades of Barbie EssilorLuxottica extends smart glasses partnership with Meta Sam Altman catapults past founder mode into 'god mode' with latest AI post AI conversation about Jeff's book The Paris show Exclusive: Meta's AI chatbot to start speaking in the voices of Judi Dench, John Cena, others, source says Google TV adds several more free channels including The Bob Ross Channel YouTube confirms your pause screen is now fair game for ads Google's passkey syncing makes it easier to move on from passwords New Cloudflare Tools Let Sites Detect and Block AI Bots for Free Google Photos is getting a redesigned video editor Google's Gemini AI might soon appear in your corporate Workspace Google Earth AI eliminates clouds Ahead of Gemini coming to Google Buds, Hey Google & Voice Match Settings Change on Headphones Quote Origin: I Had Exactly Four Seconds To Hot Up the Disintegrator, and Google Had Told Me It Wasn't Enough Project Analyzing Human Language Usage Shuts Down Because 'Generative AI Has Polluted the Data' Comedian John Mulaney brutally roasts SF techies at Dreamforce Marques Brownlee says 'I hear you' after fans criticize his new wallpaper app Cards Against Humanity sues Elon Musk's SpaceX for trespassing McDonald's touchscreen kiosks were feared as job killers. Instead, something surprising happened Mullenweg calls WP Engine a 'cancer to WordPress' and urges community to switch providers Introducing HP Print AI, Industry's First Intelligent Print Experiences The 90s Executive Yes Man More Americans – especially young adults – are regularly getting news on TikTok Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Paris Martineau Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-google. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: bitwarden.com/twit cachefly.com/twit

Stanley Is Releasing Collectible Tumblers Every Day This Week to Honor Different Decades of Barbie EssilorLuxottica extends smart glasses partnership with Meta Sam Altman catapults past founder mode into 'god mode' with latest AI post AI conversation about Jeff's book The Paris show Exclusive: Meta's AI chatbot to start speaking in the voices of Judi Dench, John Cena, others, source says Google TV adds several more free channels including The Bob Ross Channel YouTube confirms your pause screen is now fair game for ads Google's passkey syncing makes it easier to move on from passwords New Cloudflare Tools Let Sites Detect and Block AI Bots for Free Google Photos is getting a redesigned video editor Google's Gemini AI might soon appear in your corporate Workspace Google Earth AI eliminates clouds Ahead of Gemini coming to Google Buds, Hey Google & Voice Match Settings Change on Headphones Quote Origin: I Had Exactly Four Seconds To Hot Up the Disintegrator, and Google Had Told Me It Wasn't Enough Project Analyzing Human Language Usage Shuts Down Because 'Generative AI Has Polluted the Data' Comedian John Mulaney brutally roasts SF techies at Dreamforce Marques Brownlee says 'I hear you' after fans criticize his new wallpaper app Cards Against Humanity sues Elon Musk's SpaceX for trespassing McDonald's touchscreen kiosks were feared as job killers. Instead, something surprising happened Mullenweg calls WP Engine a 'cancer to WordPress' and urges community to switch providers Introducing HP Print AI, Industry's First Intelligent Print Experiences The 90s Executive Yes Man More Americans – especially young adults – are regularly getting news on TikTok Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Paris Martineau Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-google. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: bitwarden.com/twit cachefly.com/twit

Stanley Is Releasing Collectible Tumblers Every Day This Week to Honor Different Decades of Barbie EssilorLuxottica extends smart glasses partnership with Meta Sam Altman catapults past founder mode into 'god mode' with latest AI post AI conversation about Jeff's book The Paris show Exclusive: Meta's AI chatbot to start speaking in the voices of Judi Dench, John Cena, others, source says Google TV adds several more free channels including The Bob Ross Channel YouTube confirms your pause screen is now fair game for ads Google's passkey syncing makes it easier to move on from passwords New Cloudflare Tools Let Sites Detect and Block AI Bots for Free Google Photos is getting a redesigned video editor Google's Gemini AI might soon appear in your corporate Workspace Google Earth AI eliminates clouds Ahead of Gemini coming to Google Buds, Hey Google & Voice Match Settings Change on Headphones Quote Origin: I Had Exactly Four Seconds To Hot Up the Disintegrator, and Google Had Told Me It Wasn't Enough Project Analyzing Human Language Usage Shuts Down Because 'Generative AI Has Polluted the Data' Comedian John Mulaney brutally roasts SF techies at Dreamforce Marques Brownlee says 'I hear you' after fans criticize his new wallpaper app Cards Against Humanity sues Elon Musk's SpaceX for trespassing McDonald's touchscreen kiosks were feared as job killers. Instead, something surprising happened Mullenweg calls WP Engine a 'cancer to WordPress' and urges community to switch providers Introducing HP Print AI, Industry's First Intelligent Print Experiences The 90s Executive Yes Man More Americans – especially young adults – are regularly getting news on TikTok Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Paris Martineau Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-google. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: bitwarden.com/twit cachefly.com/twit

Stanley Is Releasing Collectible Tumblers Every Day This Week to Honor Different Decades of Barbie EssilorLuxottica extends smart glasses partnership with Meta Sam Altman catapults past founder mode into 'god mode' with latest AI post AI conversation about Jeff's book The Paris show Exclusive: Meta's AI chatbot to start speaking in the voices of Judi Dench, John Cena, others, source says Google TV adds several more free channels including The Bob Ross Channel YouTube confirms your pause screen is now fair game for ads Google's passkey syncing makes it easier to move on from passwords New Cloudflare Tools Let Sites Detect and Block AI Bots for Free Google Photos is getting a redesigned video editor Google's Gemini AI might soon appear in your corporate Workspace Google Earth AI eliminates clouds Ahead of Gemini coming to Google Buds, Hey Google & Voice Match Settings Change on Headphones Quote Origin: I Had Exactly Four Seconds To Hot Up the Disintegrator, and Google Had Told Me It Wasn't Enough Project Analyzing Human Language Usage Shuts Down Because 'Generative AI Has Polluted the Data' Comedian John Mulaney brutally roasts SF techies at Dreamforce Marques Brownlee says 'I hear you' after fans criticize his new wallpaper app Cards Against Humanity sues Elon Musk's SpaceX for trespassing McDonald's touchscreen kiosks were feared as job killers. Instead, something surprising happened Mullenweg calls WP Engine a 'cancer to WordPress' and urges community to switch providers Introducing HP Print AI, Industry's First Intelligent Print Experiences The 90s Executive Yes Man More Americans – especially young adults – are regularly getting news on TikTok Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Paris Martineau Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-google. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: bitwarden.com/twit cachefly.com/twit

Stanley Is Releasing Collectible Tumblers Every Day This Week to Honor Different Decades of Barbie EssilorLuxottica extends smart glasses partnership with Meta Sam Altman catapults past founder mode into 'god mode' with latest AI post AI conversation about Jeff's book The Paris show Exclusive: Meta's AI chatbot to start speaking in the voices of Judi Dench, John Cena, others, source says Google TV adds several more free channels including The Bob Ross Channel YouTube confirms your pause screen is now fair game for ads Google's passkey syncing makes it easier to move on from passwords New Cloudflare Tools Let Sites Detect and Block AI Bots for Free Google Photos is getting a redesigned video editor Google's Gemini AI might soon appear in your corporate Workspace Google Earth AI eliminates clouds Ahead of Gemini coming to Google Buds, Hey Google & Voice Match Settings Change on Headphones Quote Origin: I Had Exactly Four Seconds To Hot Up the Disintegrator, and Google Had Told Me It Wasn't Enough Project Analyzing Human Language Usage Shuts Down Because 'Generative AI Has Polluted the Data' Comedian John Mulaney brutally roasts SF techies at Dreamforce Marques Brownlee says 'I hear you' after fans criticize his new wallpaper app Cards Against Humanity sues Elon Musk's SpaceX for trespassing McDonald's touchscreen kiosks were feared as job killers. Instead, something surprising happened Mullenweg calls WP Engine a 'cancer to WordPress' and urges community to switch providers Introducing HP Print AI, Industry's First Intelligent Print Experiences The 90s Executive Yes Man More Americans – especially young adults – are regularly getting news on TikTok Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Paris Martineau Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-google. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: bitwarden.com/twit cachefly.com/twit

I wonder if people are generally upset that Mullenweg has control of “WordPress” or that he has control over a large chunk of the “open web.” Placing his irresponsible reactions aside for a moment, I think we should abstract why we might feel the way we do.The fight “for WordPress” is futile.It's a distraction really. One must stop vying for shared control over the decision making, the features, and the direction. You either choose to participate and leave your mark in the direction it's being lead (contributing, debating, communicating, etc), or just simply observe.There is no clawing away ownership.What would you do if you had shared control? What would we all do? Vote in Github for every single feature? “Hey you got a few minutes to hop on a Zoom call?” How long would that process take? Who gets to vote in the process? If you serve clients now, you already know how painful design by committee is — is that what thousands of people would do in order to choose the next default theme?The point I'm making is: I've yet to hear a real solution to the perceived problem, just complaints that we're not in control and it's mostly an Automattic driven project.I've worked too many jobs where “the company gets to decide the direction.” And guess what happens? No one does, because they don't want to challenge the boss, rather have a stable paycheck, and just want to move on with their lives. Which might be happening at Automattic, but certainly would be the case if leadership ceded control to “us.”A great product needs a single leader to set the vision and guide the organization. If not Matt Mullenweg, who? Anne McCarthy? Rich Tabor? Matias?Fact of the matter is, you can still enjoy everything WordPress has to give you regardless of who holds the reigns: 4 freedoms, a career, an open source app to publish with, and a community to share in all of that.It's too challenging, near impossible, to make any large changes to the overall direction of WordPress if we the people had control. In other words, the community most likely won't have their “Gutenberg” moment. We can, certainly try to influence others to be the change, and that's our best approach. Facing Goliath head-on isn't the smart play. Influencing others around the community is.We need to be more open and communicative to the core contributors and decision makers throughout the project. Support them, provide great feedback loops — have some empathy. Being a keyboard warrior around every design decision you don't agree with doesn't help anyone.So why aren't more people up in arms about this leadership thing? It's the lack of demand.The demand is there to improve WordPress, and that's what is happening regardless of how you feel about its current iteration or Mullenweg as a leader. Even with all of the flagrant fouls he's tossed around, he remains in control of WordPress and that's that. I'm not saying any of these issues are okay — but that it hasn't rippled throughout the community enough to cause more people to stand up, and walk out. GoDaddy could always start their own WordPress.It's a bitter taste, I get it.I see WordPress as a critical link in the open web's infrastructure. As much as I enjoy being a critic on the product side of WordPress, I'm much more interested in its survival for the open web's sake.WordPress is getting better, its existence encourages a more open web and decentralized approach for publishers. It's the best tool with mass appeal to compete with closed source systems. And I generally believe that Mullenweg wants an open web, which is great in the longterm for all of us.As DHH put it, open source is neither a community nor a democracy. People show up to do the work, for the benefit of us all. And I say: Reap those benefits! Be a good steward of WordPress, help it thrive — we all continue to gain net positive.We're moving in the direction of a more clear business model for Automattic over the next few years: WordPress.com vs self-hosted WordPress w/ Jetpack, full stop. There is no turning back on gaining community control. In fact, I do think we'll start to see Mullenweg place key Automatticians into critical product roles to allow himself to scale his burgeoning organization.Strap in, because the next 5 years are going to be interesting. And hey, it could be worse, imagine if Salesforce owned WordPress. ★ Support this podcast ★

The Biggest WordPress Moves While Mullenweg was on Sabbatical Matt Mullenweg is returning from his 3 month sabbatical, dubbed “Samattical”, which kicked off February 1, 2024. He handed the CEO reigns back to Toni Schneider and placed Daniel Bachhuber in charge of WordPress.com in his absence. I thought we'd see the whole organization coast while the open source benevolent dictator dug his toes into the sand, but Automattic/WordPress stayed as busy as ever!I don't know how much Mullenweg was involved with all of these milestones — something tells me he didn't stay as disconnected as he had hoped. Let's take a look at some of the big moves that happened with WordPress, Automattic, and the community while Matt was away. 1. The WP Tavern Hunger GamesOne of the first major activities to kick off was the search for two new full-time writers to breathe life back into WP Tavern. It was a Hunger Games-esque approach, where 7 or 8 writers, duked it out to be crowned winner #1 & #2. Author Brian Coords was the last contestant to publish a post on March 14th, 2024. There hasn't been any clear announcement on who earned the position or what happens next, and most authors I've spoken to are still wondering what's next for their writing careers at the Tavern. 2. Woo.com → WooCommerce.comSomething I didn't have on my Bingo Card was the short-lived woo.com domain defaulting back to the original WooCommerce.com domain. “Moving to Woo.com created challenges for our users to find WooCommerce in Google searches, which were made worse following Google's March update. To address those challenges, we assembled a group of SEO experts and consultants to evaluate the best way to build on the strength of the WooCommerce brand.” Kevin Bates wrote in an update.3. The Old WP-Admin Dashboard is New for WordPress.comIn another, what's old is new again, WordPress.com is giving users the ability to “roll back” to a traditional WP Admin interface. It seems there's no future for the once innovative Calypso project, citing that developers were looking for a more familiar interface when working on WordPress.com sites. This might be a sign that more WordPress consultants are starting to recommend .com more to their customers now that the platform has been supporting user installed plugins on the $30/mo+ plans. 4. Automattic spends an additional $125 Million on Messaging with Beeper Acquisition Automattic is pouring money into messaging, with its latest acquisition of Beeper. Which I'm assuming Mullenweg was quite active on during sabbatical. I like the idea of Automattic building up a strong solution for messaging. In a world where SEO is getting squeezed and social media feeds being curated by ad-driven algos, we need more direct channels with our readers/subscribers/customers — and I think that's direct messaging.It could be an exciting new frontier with Automattic leading the charge, and I'm here for it!WordPress Studio: The Future of Local Development?5. WordPress.com Launches Studio AppThe new Studio app allows users to run WordPress installs, locally on their computer. This is a great way to learn WordPress and develop WordPress sites for free. It's powered by the same technology that runs the official WordPress playground and gives users the ability to publish their local websites to a temporary WordPress.com account to share with the world. Other hosting platforms like WP Engine and Kinsta offer local development environments making this a natural fit for Automattic to offer.6. Big Sky: WordPress.com starts waiting list for AI designed websitesWordPress.com decided to throw their hat into the AI web design ring by opening a beta signup for their latest project, BigSkyI've signed up to trial the product, but I also signed up for access to Studio before it was released and didn't hear anything — fingers crossed. If anyone at Automattic is reading this: I have found 100% AI website builders underwhelming. It's basically machine learning with blocks and patterns that are tagged with keywords that just get mashed together based on the prompt. I prefer starting with a collection of professionally designed themes and patterns, but I'm happy to see if they can change my mind! That's not all! The above marks 6 of the biggest moves I think happened around the WordPress space while Mullenweg enjoyed some time off. But, that's not all! Here's a quick list of other notable events that happened over the last 3 months: WordPress 6.5 Launched.The Community-lead Make Marketing Team was shutdown in favor of a new Media Corps experiment.WordPress.com now supports Github integrationWordPress.com launched a new public pattern directoryWooCommerce launched a new update managerWas there anything on your list that didn't make it here? Let me know on Twitter/X! ★ Support this podcast ★

This week we brought Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Automattic and co-founder of WordPress onto the show, along with Kishan Bagaria, the founder of Texts.com. Automattic bought all-in-one messaging app Texts.com for $50 million back in October. Well, we had questions, not only about the deal, but also the state of the written word online. A few notes before you hit play. First, Automattic is more acquisitive than you thought. A look at its history of purchases is critical context for our conversation. And, second, TechCrunch uses WordPress. We in fact are WordPress VIP customers. Neither fact is news, and of course had no bearing on our choice to bring Mullenweg and Bagaria on the podcast, but felt worth noting all the same.Alright, sit back, hit play, and have some fun with us! We're back on Friday with our news roundup!Connect with Equity on X and Threads @EquityPods, and keep up with all of TechCrunch's podcasts @TechCrunchPods on TikTok.For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity's Simplecast website.Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more! Credits: Equity is hosted by Editor in Chief of TechCrunch+ Alex Wilhelm and TechCrunch Senior Reporter Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.

I've been learning the Twenty Twenty-Four theme deeply over the last few weeks, as I feel this is one of the most important default themes ever released. A theme that has a good set of patterns at launch, a less opinionated design than previous default themes, and with the site editing and block experience at an acceptable level for customizations. TT4 provides a solid starting point for many small business or creators looking for a new website. My only hope is that the design team behind TT4 continue to improve the feature set, and not let it sit after launch. Let's make this theme better over the next year!I'm not surprised with Mullenweg's offensive take on the recent price hike at Elementor, but I also feel it's a bit short sighted for the industry as a whole. Does it have to be core vs 3rd party plugins for WordPress to survive? Do the future enhancements to site editing and blocks slowly erode the page builder market? I understand why it's happening, and as frustrating as it can be, the fragmentation of WordPress experience has brought us a lot of choices and innovation over the years. Get the rest of the show notes: https://thewpminute.com/?p=12945 ★ Support this podcast ★

Hola, bienvenido a WP A DAY, tu fuente de Inteligencia Artificial para conocer las últimas noticias y actualizaciones en el mundo de WordPress . Hoy es domingo 22 de octubre de 2023. Ollie Dash, un plugin complementario del conocido tema Ollie, ha sido lanzado recientemente. El tema Ollie había causado revuelo debido a que sus características de incorporación fueron eliminadas durante el proceso de revisión en WordPress.org. Sin embargo, Ollie Dash permite a los usuarios configurar fácilmente el tema con solo unos clics, incluyendo la paleta de colores, el logotipo y el icono del sitio. Además, ofrece la opción de crear rápidamente páginas completas y seleccionar la página de inicio desde un menú desplegable. El plugin también incluye documentación y recursos en video para ayudar a los usuarios a comenzar. El equipo detrás de Ollie Dash tiene previsto agregar más funcionalidades a través de plugins en el futuro. El co-fundador de WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, dará su discurso anual del Estado de la Palabra (SOTW, por sus siglas en inglés) desde Madrid el 11 de diciembre, ante una audiencia en vivo a las 15:00 UTC. Este cambio reconoce la mayoría de usuarios de WordPress que utilizan el software en un idioma distinto al inglés. El evento estará disponible en streaming y se podrán enviar preguntas para la sección de preguntas y respuestas. Mullenweg probablemente hará anuncios importantes y compartirá progresos sobre el proyecto Gutenberg. El uso de generadores de contenido de IA ha creado la necesidad de detectar si un trabajo fue generado por un humano o una inteligencia artificial. Las herramientas de detección de contenido de IA analizan el texto y muestran el porcentaje escrito por IA y el aporte humano. Estas herramientas son útiles para dar retroalimentación a los escritores, pero es importante recordar que el contenido generado por IA puede tener errores, hechos incompletos o plagio. A pesar de estas herramientas, es importante recordar que el uso de la IA debe ser complementario y no reemplazar completamente el trabajo humano. Para terminar el episodio de hoy, el proyecto Gutenberg consta de cuatro fases: Edición más fácil, Personalización, Colaboración y Multilingüe. Según las respuestas en una encuesta realizada, algunos usuarios sugieren agregar una quinta fase con un enfoque en los siguientes temas: mejora de la biblioteca de medios, experiencia en dispositivos móviles y la integración de inteligencia artificial (IA). Además, se mencionaron otros temas como limpieza de errores, accesibilidad y extensibilidad. Aunque estas sugerencias no se consideran para la quinta fase oficial, son importantes consideraciones para mantener relevante a WordPress en el futuro. Si disfrutaste este episodio, suscríbete al feed RSS. Para obtener la transcripción y los enlaces a las publicaciones del blog mencionadas en este programa, visita Blogpocket.com. Gracias por escucharnos y nos vemos en el próximo episodio. ¡Te deseo una feliz semana!

WordPress.org briefly introduced 1-click plugin previews this week. If you found yourself looking at the plugin page on the world's largest directory this week you could enter the official WordPress playground to explore what the plugin had to offer.The first problem? Well, it didn't work. This sent authors scrambling to understand why their plugins weren't working or more generally making the case for why this lead to a worse experience overall for the end user.The root of the issue, however, was that none of these changes were communicated to authors. No deadline, no opt-out — nothing.The changes have been reverted, and while I think this is a great idea — I mean, who would'n't want to try before you buy? — it needs much more thought, planning, and communication next time.Plugin authors: we're really seeing whose playground this really is these days aren't we?Ollie without onboardingOllie, the theme I covered in last week's monologue, is now available in the repo but looking a little thinner than when it started.The block theme that made a controversial splash won't offer its “innovative” onboarding experience for users. That feature will come in a plugin in the near future.Vote vote voteGet out and vote!The WP Weekly has launched its annual WordPress awards. Vote for all things WordPress, including this podcast. We're in section 20. If you love our podcast, please vote for us!Nathan Wrigley is also selling awards. Name yourself your own winner for only $20. All proceeds will be donated to WPCC The WP Builds WordPress Awards 2023Open source and AIMeta is trying to shake up the AI world, specifically OpenAI and Google, with its open source Llama model.“Open source drives innovation because it enables many more developers to build with new technology,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post.This open source “debate” has spurred, apparently, a lot of debate in the VC world. Here's a recent episode of the This Week in Startups where in the first 5 minutes you can get some insight into what a billionaire investor thinks about it. Bill Gurley and Sunny Madra talk open-source vs. proprietary AI | E1825Open Source and AI is worth mentioning because Jetpack uses OpenAI, which isn't open source at all. I'm really curious to see what Mullenweg decides to do with the AI features in Jetpack and WordPress.com as he refines that product.Going all-in on a closed sourced product like that, after alerting us all to learn AI deeply recently would be…weird.Matt Mullenweg on the Silicon SlopesSpeaking of Matt Mullenweg, he recently appeared on a short interview at the Silicon Slopes Summit.He talks to a media personality about open source, Automattic, and remote work. I wanted to play a few clips that you might find interesting. The value of Automattic, the value of the WordPress ecosystem, and how he sees his role (at least to an outsider) in the community.“ Automatic's close to 2,000 people. The business has been very, very successful, valued at over seven billion dollars.”Matt MullenwegWordPress started very much just as a personal volunteer project. And it was really just about blogging, kind of that personal journaling. Over the years though, really in concert with the community.You know, I'm just a figurehead, really. All the good stuff from WordPress comes from the tens of thousands of volunteers around the world.Matt MullenwegOne cool thing is the WordPress ecosystem, which is over 10 billion a year of revenue going through it now is a lot of the companies look just like automatic and that they're often distributed, they do open source and everything.Matt Mullenweg ★ Support this podcast ★

On this episode of WPwatercooler, the discussion centers around the WordPress community, its leadership, and the challenges faced by its contributors. Sé Reed talks about her recent “kerfuffle” with Matt Mullenweg on Twitter/X and why she thinks he designated her as the only person he's ever blocked in 17 years. The crew also discusses the significance of WordPress's open-source nature and the increasingly noticeable conflicts with Automattic, including Mullenweg's demoralizing approach to leading the WordPress project. Sé highlights the challenges faced by the Make WordPress marketing team, including their inability to properly develop wordpress.org's SEO. Both Jason Tucker and Jason Cosper chime in throughout the conversation, emphasizing the value of community involvement and historic context. The episode wraps up with encouragement for listeners to actively contribute to making all of WordPress better, and a call for accountability across the WordPress project. https://x.com/sereedmedia/status/1702032575190155637?s=20 Chapters: 00:00:00 Intro 00:05:00 Background of the WordPress Community 00:10:00 The Role and Influence of Matt Mullenweg 00:15:00 The Evolution of WordPress and its Ecosystem 00:20:00 Challenges in Open Source Projects 00:25:00 The Importance of Community Feedback 00:30:00 The Dynamics of WordPress Leadership 00:35:00 Sé Reed's Personal Experiences and Observations 00:40:00 The Future of WordPress and its Direction 00:45:00 The Role of WordPress.tv and its Challenges 00:51:28 Sé Reed's Initial Thoughts on WordPress Community 00:53:15 Discussion on WordPress Governance and Leadership 00:55:10 Sé's Experience 00:57:32 Sé Reed's Concerns about Matt Mullenweg's Leadership 01:00:23 Importance of Open-Source and Community Voice 01:02:12 Challenges Faced by WordPress Marketing Team 01:04:05 Sé's Advocacy and Efforts in the Community 01:06:15 Jason Tucker and Jason Cosper's Insights 01:08:40 Encouragement for Community Involvement 01:13:17 Discord 01:15:41 Outro #WordPress #Gutenberg #Twitter Show Notes & Transcript: https://wpwatercooler.com/wpwatercooler/ep463-not-that-kind-of-block/ Want to create live streams like this? Check out StreamYard: https://streamyard.com/pal/d/5756954563575808

We have to start this week's news with coverage of WordPress' 20th birthday. Our beloved CMS officially reached the milestone on Saturday, May 27. Dozens of celebratory events were held around the world. You can even sign an online birthday card as part of the #WP20 From Blogs to Blocks campaign.Meanwhile, there is some special content worth checking out. First, WordPress co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little joined Drupal founder Dries Buytaert for a conversation on open source, AI, and the future of the web.And if you'd like to read about the last 10 years of WordPress history, take a look at Building Blocks: The Evolution of WordPress. The online book serves as the second volume in a series.Not surprisingly, the WordPress community also shared their thoughts via blog posts. That's how this whole thing got started, right?Among the highlights:WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy shared an ode to the WordPress community's role in the project's success;Sarah Gooding of WP Tavern reflected on the impact of WordPress and outlines future challenges;HeroPress founder Topher DeRosia looked back at his start in blogging and what WordPress has meant to him;For more coverage of the big celebration, check out the #WP20 hashtag on Twitter.Links You Shouldn't MissWordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg wrote a short post regarding his creation's 20th anniversary. And he also announced the Audrey Scholars program. The aim is to provide 100% scholarships to selected members. There are currently 13 scholars in the program, which renews annually. All are encouraged to apply, although the focus will be on “children of parents or guardians who have contributed significantly to open source, or have been significant in our principal Matt Mullenweg's life.” Audrey Scholars is run by Audrey Capital, Mullenweg's angel investment and research company.Does Automattic have a top-secret AI plugin in the works? Author Seth Godin recently discussed such a tool on the Tim Ferris Podcast. The WP Minute's Matt Medeiros took a closer look at how important AI will be to WordPress. He even makes a guess at this new item Godin referred to as the “single best use I have seen of Chat GPT or whatever they're using.”European service provider group.one has acquired popular WordPress SEO plugin Rank Math. The free version of the plugin currently boasts over 2 million active installations. This a deeper dive into WordPress for group.one, as they also own web host one.com and the WP Rocket optimization plugin.A couple of well-known WordPress workflow solutions are teaming up. Sandbox site provider InstaWP has partnered with collaboration tool Atarim. There will be cross-product integration. Together, the aim is to make it easier to spin up test environments, collaborate, and track changes.From the Grab Bag Now it's time to take a look at some other interesting topics shared by our contributors.Automattic has pushed an automated update of the Jetpack plugin to patch a security hole. The vulnerability was found during an internal audit and would allow site authors to modify WordPress files. If you use Jetpack, make sure to update to the latest version immediately.There's been lots of talk regarding diversity and inclusion related to the upcoming WordCamp Europe. With that in mind, Michelle Frechette has shared some thoughts on moving forward as a community.WordPress developer and accessibility expert Joe Dolson has announced the closure of the Access Monitor and WP Tweets Pro plugins. Both plugins will be shuttered due to complications with their third-party tie ins.The results of the WordPress Individual Learner Survey are in. A total of 583 people participated. An analysis shows that 321 respondents described themselves as ‘somewhat knowledgeable' or ‘very knowledgeable' of WordPress, while nearly 32% had more than 10 years of experience.The WordPress Performance Team has conducted an analysis of version 6.2. The goal was to identify opportunities for future enhancements. Based on their findings, performance upgrades for classic theme templates, block widgets, and translation loading are among the identified targets.There's a new proposal to establish a WordPress Sustainability Team. The group would be responsible for promoting eco-friendly practices on the web and for in-person events. It would also include creating themes and plugins that serve this purpose.Developer Bill Erickson has released BE Starter, a hybrid starter theme. The package combines classic PHP templates with a theme.json file to control block styles.Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: - Michelle Frechette- Mustaasam Saleem- Daniel SchutzsmithOutroThanks to you, dear listener, for tuning in to your favorite 5-minutes of WordPress news every Wednesday.You can support independent content like this by purchasing us a digital coffee at thewpminute.com/supportOr join the #linksquad membership for $79/year to support the show and become a producer of the WP Minute at thewpminute.com/supportThat's it for today's episode, if you enjoyed it, please share it wherever you do social media and jump on the mailing list at thewpminute.com. ★ Support this podcast ★

Do you remember what made WordPress 5.6 so historic? It was the first version of the software produced by an all-woman and non-binary release squad. And it looks like history is about to repeat itself.WordPress 6.3 is scheduled to be released in July and will once again feature an all-women and non-binary squad. Project Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy made the announcement and shared an outline for those interested in contributing.The momentum for this reprisal can be traced back to Matt Mullenweg's 2022 State of the Word. During the Q&A portion, project contributor Laura Byrne asked Mullenweg to commit to another such release. The result is another step forward for inclusion and diversity in the WordPress community.Next up (listen to the podcast for more): Michelle Frechette with the Community Minute!Links You Shouldn't MissAI experimentation continues in the WordPress community. This time around, Human Made's Joe Hoyle has demonstrated a generative AI plugin that's natively integrated into the block editor. The plugin works with ChatGPT and allows users to enter prompts. Content is then generated based on that input. But there's more to the story. The WP Tavern's Sarah Gooding took a deeper look at this and other AI experiments currently taking place.Block Visibility is a WordPress plugin with over 9,000 active installs. Developer Nick Diego recently made the decision to convert his freemium product into a free one. He spoke with The WP Minute's Eric Karkovack about the change and his WordPress journey so far.Guildenberg, a new organization geared towards WordPress product founders, is up and running. The aim is to help with product monetization, accelerate adoption, and standardize compatibility. CEO Jonathan Wold has put out a call to founders who are interested in learning more.What's the state of workplace culture within the WordPress ecosystem? The Team Experience Index aims to find out. It's an anonymous survey for employees designed to gather feedback that can be shared with emplo ★ Support this podcast ★

When it comes to adding features to a WordPress plugin, how many are too many? That's the question facing the WordPress Performance Team with regard to the Performance Lab plugin.Recent additions of SQLite and WebP image conversion functionality have resulted in some constructive criticism from WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. As Sarah Gooding reports at WP Tavern, Mullenweg has asked that these items be spun off into individual plugins.This jibes with Mullenweg's previous call to revive canonical plugins. That is, a plugin that's community supported and adds niche functionality.On the other side of the coin, Performance Team members expressed concern that separate plugins may mean less visibility. As it stands, Performance Lab has over 30,000 active installs. A new niche plugin will have to start from ground zero in terms of publicity.Multiple options are being discussed and the results could mean big changes for similar community-driven plugins.Links You Shouldn't MissAs WordPress has grown to power over 40% of the web, the need for knowledgeable experts has increased. But how can we determine who qualifies? The WP Minute's Eric Karkovack looks at the potential impact of a WordPress certification program.The first major WordPress plugin acquisition of 2023 belongs to Awesome Motive, as they've scooped up Duplicator. A website backup and migration plugin, Duplicator currently has over 1 million active installs of its free version. The deal was announced via separate blog posts at WP Beginner and former owner, Snap Creek.WordPress.com has announced Blaze, a tool that enables site owners to advertise their content on WordPress.com and Tumblr. Websites hosted on WordPress.com have a dedicated page to create their personalized ads, in addition to direct links on their site's dashboard. Self-hosted WordPress sites can access similar functionality via the Jetpack plugin.Make sure your installations are up-to-date, as backdoor malware targeting WordPress is on the loose. WP Tavern reports that the software runs on Linux and looks for vulnerabilities across several plugins and themes. Security researcher Dr. Web has the full list of vulnerable software. The WordPress Five for the Future initiative is looking for feedback. A recent blog post examines the current “contributor journey” for both individuals and companies. Community members are encouraged to suggest improvements and share opinions.ClassicPress, the open-source CMS forked from WordPress 4.9, has been contemplating its future of late. The project recently asked community members to vote on a path forward. By a narrow margin, members voted in favor of re-forking based on WordPress 6.0. Because the margin was so slim, project director Viktor Nagornyy is suggesting a hybrid approach to retaining compatibility with WordPress themes and plugins. ★ Support this podcast ★

Matt Mullenweg held court at the annual State of the Word event on December 15. Several topics were touched, including the use of Gutenberg outside of WordPress, the return of in-person Meetups and WordCamps, and the announcement of a Community Summit set to take place in 2023. Mullenweg also detailed a change to the WordPress.org Plugin and Theme repositories. Taxonomies have been added that allow authors to categorize their products as “commercial” or “community” - among other labels. The goal is to help users better understand the purpose of and level of support provided by theme and plugin authors. The feature is opt-in, and it's already being put to use by some products. As usual, the event was packed with insight and information. The WP Minute has a handy summary of key moments, along with a full transcript. It's accompanied by a video highlight package that condenses the entire event down to just over 16 minutes. You'll also want to check out State of the Word recaps from both Sarah Gooding at WP Tavern and Courtney Robertson at GoDaddy. Links You Shouldn't Miss There's a new competitor in the WordPress email newsletter space. WordPress.com Newsletter was announced this week. The feature allows users to publish new posts as email newsletters, collect subscribers, and design a template. Monetization features are in the works with details forthcoming. Meanwhile, our own Matt Medeiros offers his analysis of the product via a new video. The subject of WordPress nostalgia seems to be popular these days. The WP Minute's Eric Karkovack looks at why that is and how it could help us shape the future of the community. Security firm Wordfence has released a free vulnerability database API. Hosting companies, security researchers, and individual users will have access to a continuously updated repository of vulnerabilities. The company hopes that the community “will turn this data into free and commercial security products that will improve the security of the WordPress community.” What does the future look like for ClassicPress? The open source project is a fork of WordPress that retains the TinyMCE-based Classic Editor. A new poll asks users whether the content management system should be “re-forked” to WordPress 6.0 or continue along its current path, based on WordPress 4.9. Classifieds listings buy yours TweetGrab crawls your site and turns any embedded Tweets into screenshots with the click of a button. ZipMessage Record and swap messages asynchronously with clients and others using video, screen, audio or text + Embed video intake forms in WordPress. MainWP 4.3 includes Client Management, a new default theme, and an easy way to organize clients & sites from a single dashboard.

What's a web hosting provider's role in content moderation? WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg recently weighed in. Mullenweg was a guest on The Verge's Decoder podcast and discussed the issue as it relates to WordPress VIP hosting. Specifically, he commented on a controversial story that was published in 2020 on the New York Post website. The Post is a WordPress VIP client. The story covered material allegedly recovered from a laptop owned by Hunter Biden, the son of U.S. President Joe Biden. Debate over the origins of the material saw both Facebook and Twitter temporarily restrict links to the story. Mullenweg says Automattic reviewed the matter but ultimately decided not to take action. Automattic has policies in place for content moderation, and Mullenweg referred to them as a “starting point” for looking deeper into a specific case. Links You Shouldn't Miss Theme developer ILOVEWP published a report on the most popular WordPress plugins released in 2022. The report uses publicly available data for plugins in the official WordPress.org repository. In all, nearly 4,200 plugins have been added so far this year. Out of that, only 7 have achieved at least 50,000 active installations. Did publishing platform Substack use unattributed code from open source competitor Ghost? Ghost's founder and CEO John O'Nolan makes a case in a recent Twitter thread. In a response thread, Substack co-founder and CEO Chris Best says the whole thing is a misunderstanding. Rather, Substack's custom theming API is merely compatible with Ghost. There's a lot here to digest. Therefore, reading the threads from both parties is recommended to see where each side is coming from. What will WordPress freelancers face in 2023? The WP Minute's Eric Karkovack offered some predictions. Upgrading to PHP 8 and navigating an uncertain economic environment are among them. Development firm Awesome Motive has introduced SendLayer, an email delivery service aimed at WordPress website owners. It requires a free API key and works in conjunction with the WP Mail SMTP plugin. Paid plans are being offered. Classifieds listings buy yours TweetGrab crawls your site and turns any embedded Tweets into screenshots with the click of a button. ZipMessage Record and swap messages asynchronously with clients and others using video, screen, audio or text + Embed video intake forms in WordPress. MainWP 4.3 includes Client Management, a new default theme, and an easy way to organize clients & sites from a single dashboard. From the Grab Bag Now it's time to take a look at some other interesting topics shared by our contributors. The Block Editor is coming to the WordPress.org support forums. According to Sarah Gooding at WP Tavern, the WordPress.org Meta Team is

The annual State of the Word event has been scheduled for December 15, 2022 from 1:00 - 2:30pm EST. WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg will take to the microphone to discuss the year that was and what lies ahead. The event will take place in New York City and will also be live streamed. If you'd like to attend in-person, there's a survey available to fill out. Meanwhile, you can also submit questions to Mullenweg ahead of time by emailing ask-matt@wordcamp.org or during the event via YouTube's chat feature. Links You Shouldn't Miss The WP Minute's Eric Karkovack has a wish list of things he'd love to see from WordPress in 2023. More than any technical enhancements, his hopes include better communication, collaboration, and more opportunities to get together for in-person events. Tom McFarlin contributed to The WP Minute with an in-depth tutorial on working with multiple user metadata queries. He takes us step-by-step through the process of retrieving a custom set of user records. WordPress.org is launching a blog aimed at developers. Sarah Gooding of WP Tavern reports that the project is currently in beta testing. The focus will be on new features that impact theme and plugin developers. According to WP Tavern, the Divi page builder will undergo some major changes in 2023. Version 5.0 isn't slated to see new features, rather a complete rewrite of its underlying framework. The revamp will be built using React and aims to improve compatibility with the Gutenberg Block Editor. Last week, we reported on Mike McAlister's concept for OpenPress, a plugin that would turn a WordPress install into a syndicated microblogging platform. This week, Alex Standiford expands on the idea and wonders if WordPress might one day have a bidirectional relationship with social media platforms. Classifieds listings buy yours Equalized Digital Get 50% off Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker November 20-30 with coupon code BlackFriday22 and start making your website accessible. From the Grab Bag Now it's time to take a look at some other interesting topics shared by our contributors. WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg announced that Tumblr will soon add support for ActivityPub, an open and decentralized protocol for connecting to Mastodon and other social media platforms. The announcement comes as more users are contemplating Twitter alternatives. Speaking of Tumblr, Nyasha Green at MasterWP looks at the platform's recent resurgence. Sell Courses Online have

The conversation regarding the removal of WordPress plugin active install growth data has continued this week. The data chart was officially removed from the WordPress.org plugin repository back on September 29, 2022. Even as plugin authors and other community members have asked for the chart's return, no formal reason has been given for its removal. The possibilities of privacy and security issues have been brought up, but there's been no official announcement from WordPress leadership. Over at WP Tavern, Sarah Gooding reports on a Trac ticket discussion started by Mark Zahra. WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg has chimed in and said that adding relevant statistics for plugin authors “...will take some work but it's doable.” Mullenweg also responded to a tweet from Zahra stating, “We'll add something new for small plug-in devs.” Meanwhile, the community continues to express concern. Investor and artist Jean Galea wondered if WordPress is entering a “death spiral”. And MasterWP's Rob Howard says WordPress may be turning away its biggest fans. Next up (listen to the podcast for more): Michelle Frechette with the Community Minute! Links You Shouldn't Miss MasterWP's WordCamp travel sponsorship program plans to keep on rolling in 2023. It aims to enable a diverse group of people to attend events by defraying travel costs. This year, the program helped seven recipients head to WordCamp US in San Diego, California. Rob Howard wrote about the reasoning behind and the impact of the program. There's also a form for anyone interested in receiving a travel stipend to attend WordCamp US 2023 in National Harbor, Maryland. Howard also put out a call for potential sponsors. For our part, the WP Minute has made a $1,500 contribution. From the Grab Bag Now it's time to take a look at some other interesting topics shared by our contributors. A hosted WooCommerce package will be coming to WordPress.com in 2023.Carl Alexander took a look at the ups and downs of contributing to WordPress outside of the official project.Matt Cromwell and Kim Coleman sat down with AccessAlly founder Nathalie Lussier to discuss outlining a WordPress product roadmap.WordPress 6.1 will see a performance boost, thanks to the addition of database query caching.A familiar name is listed in Newsweek's “America's 100 Most Loved Workplaces 2022” rankings. Automattic, owner of WordPress.com and founded by Matt Mullenweg, came in at #31 this year.Open source search engine Meilisearch recently

News A new WordPress homepage and download page is live but was it done quickly enough? Mullenweg's perception of how long a layout should take started a lot of discussion about the timing of the release, the number of volunteers on the project…to well…you name it. The comments to the controversy ran the gamut. Mullenweg's comments were posted in an article in Search Engine Journal about using the Block Editor. He said: it's such a basic layout, it's hard to imagine it taking a single person more than a day on Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, or one of the WP page builders. Brian Coords wrote an opinion piece on MasterWP that there may be a leadership problem surrounding the project. This captures how people have felt about the WordPress Community for years. The bottom line is that there are many contributors that want to make WordPress better and need guidance in the project to get there. They want to be a part of the next iteration and keep the community growing and moving forward. There is a new Twenty Twenty-Three default theme in development and there are many variations that are being proposed. Sarah Gooding over at WPTavern reviews what has been proposed and reviewed what submissions look like. This project will close on August 31st to prepare for the October 25, 2022 release. Gutenberg Gutenberg designers are considering replacing the current welcome guide with a new onboarding experience. This idea is to show the features available upfront. You should go and check out the design changes proposed and provide feedback over at make.wordpress.org. WooCommerce WooCommerce has submitted a Request for Change (RFC) to reduce the size of the woocommerce plugin archive. If you are using WooCommerce you should review how this change could impact debugging your workflows. Events There is still time to nominate your favorite WordPress products over at the WP Weekly. This is the second year for the awards and a fun way to support your favorite products. From Our Contributors and Producers The Newsletter Glue plugin on the repo is now permanently closed. The WP Minute member, Lesley Simm tweeted: Took us long enough. The Newsletter Glue plugin on the repo is now permanently closed.We last made a legit update to it over a year ago. 5 months ago, we added a notice to say we would close it in May 2022, then just didn't.  Cameron Jones writes in his blog why he is not sold on ‘Five For The Future". His personal experience about the way to contribute may be shared by others and it should be paid attention to if the WordPress community is to get through this time of growing pains. A new proposal, published by Automattic-sponsored contributor Adam Zielinski, calls for c

You'd have to be living under a rock to miss the recent WP drama unfold on Twitter. In some quickly deleted fever-induced tweets, Mullenweg likened GoDaddy to a “parasitic company” that is an “existential threat” to WordPress. Explore more of the debate in the following articles: Matt Medeiros' take on What would GoDaddy's WordPress look like? WP Tavern recaps the Mullenweg twitter thread. MasterWP's Rob Howard weighs in. Finally, GoDaddy responds to (almost) the whole shebang in a Sarah Gooding interview. Moving and shaking at Post Status Long-time Post Status news anchor David Bisset announces his departure from the position. David will be taking on the role of Product Development for WP Charitable at Awesome Motive, after the company announced the acquisition of the plugin. Michelle Frechette highlighted some of the assholes in the WordPress space. She recalls her first-person experiences in the community in Misogyny in WordPress is Real. From our contributors and producers Rae Morey explores the Australian WordPress vibe after WP Minute Producer Cameron Jones sparked the debate on Twitter. WP Lift, long-time WordPress blog, is for sale over on Flippa. How do you like your Classic Press? Shaken, stirred, on the rocks? “Recent turbulence in the ClassicPress community has resulted in the directors resigning and new leadership installed. The WordPress fork is run under a non-profit organization called the ClassicPress Initiative. “ Sarah Gooding summarized the events at the Tavern. Events WordCamp US tickets will go on sale tomorrow, June 30th 2022. Visit the WordCamp US website for more information. The Grab bag! Twitter announced a longform writing feature. The Lexman artificial podcast creates a completely original interview podcast…with itself…in different voices. I enjoyed the outline of how Basecamp built the new “Bubble up” feature in HEY email. Our very own Raquel Landefeld was on the Women in WP podcast number 86. We'd never 86 the Raquel! Eric Karkovack highlights 10 Lesser-known WordPress plugins Matt Report talks life after selling a plugin business with Corey Maass Next up! Get the Pulse on WordPress with Raquel Landefeld N

We have switched over to Slack from Discord. News There has been a lot of feedback for full site editing in the latest release of WordPress. The team over on make.wordpress.org is looking for people to sign up for usability testing by June 24th. This outreach program is going to try something new and pair up members of the program with community designers. Once paired, they will then find time between June 20th and July 1st to record a 15-minute call on Zoom going through one of two tasks: Creating & applying a new header, and using and customizing patterns. WordPress.org is now strongly recommending that theme authors switch to local hosted webfonts. Sarah Gooding writes over on WPTavern that a recent German court case fined a website using Google-hosted webfonts. In order to comply with GDPR - Europe's General Data Protection Regulation - WordPress themes should switch to locally hosted webfonts. Are you still recovering from WCEU? There are two reviews from media supporters that you may want to check out. Bob Dunn and Matt Medeiros recorded their experiences. And there are nearly 3000 event photos. If you would like to see those you can view the photo album from WCEU on Flickr. Andrew Palmer reviews his WCEU experience right here on the WP Minute. Nathan Wrigley interviews Matt Mullenweg on the Jukebox podcast hosted at the WPTavern. Mullenweg shares his reflections on WordPress and the changes to come in the future. WooCommerce: WooCommerce 6.6 was released and you can find the complete changelog over on the WooCommerce site for the recent changes. From Our Contributors and Producers Eric Karkovack writes about the CMS landscape (including WordPress) on the latest at the WP Minute. Eric makes a good argument about why a freelancer would not choose WordPress for building a website. What's with the WordPress vibe? Changes and Acquisitions seem to be published weekly now. Acquisitions in #WordPress have created some concern among smaller businesses and entrepreneurs as we compete with bigger companies with much larger budgets. Mark Zahra has a little survey on Twitter asking if you had to double down on one area in the next 6 months with the goal of generating growth, what would it be? There were several layoffs reported lately from Elementor and Envato. James Giroux tweeted about the status of @envato and @elemntor announcing significant redundancies in the last week. You can help those affected by: 1. Celebrating wins publicly and calling out individuals by name 2. Adding to their LinkedIn profiles 3. Introducing them to your network Next Up: Simplified Business Minute by Sam Muñoz The Case for Not Automating Client Interac

Strattic was acquired by Elementor. Miriam Schwab, co-founder of Strattic writes: “Life is interesting – sometimes outcomes are obvious, and sometimes what ends up happening kind of blows our minds. When we set out to build Strattic, we expected to follow the usual path: raise Pre-Seed, Seed, A rounds etc. An exit was always on the table, but who knows when that would be or how that would look? It was hard to imagine.”Miriam Schwab Well, imagine no more as her team brings Jamstack to Elementor. A move that should add a lot of value and expertise to the cloud offering of Elementor. Stay subscribed to hear an interview with Miriam on this podcast. Julien Melissas tweeted that his company Craftpeak was acquired. Craftpeak is complete with web solutions for craft breweries. Good news! If you've been struggling with FSE, WordPress 6.1 is set to improve that experience, writes Sarah Gooding on the Tavern. See the roadmap for 6.1 and learn what's ahead…all the way to 2025?! Brian Coords continues to challenge the WordPress status quo over on MasterWP in two featured posts today. First, When the Cathedral Owns the Bazaar, a fresh take on the age-old dilemma: Automattic, a WordPress agency, and an open source ideology walk into a bar. Capping off his second post right here on The WP Minute, where he asks Where will the WordPress middle class go? Rebooting a concept that I wrote about a while back about the blue collar digital worker. Matt Cromwell and Lesley Sim have officially announced Glam That Plugin! Check out the announcement YouTube video where Lesley looks great and Matt…well he's Matt. The grab bag is back! And it's filled with threads! Kim Coleman co-founder of Paid Memberships Pro has an interesting thread on taking a product focus sabbatical. Matias Ventura added more commentary to the WCEU fireside chat with Mullenweg and Josepha Haden Chomposy. He also extended these thoughts around the admin experience in a Make WordPress post. Alan Sschlesser urges that theme.json is not the replacement we're hoping for in WordPress themes. Phil Crumm chops the head off of headless WordPress solutions. Stating that in terms of headless, “it's (WordPress) falling short.” Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Eric KarkovackDaniel SchutzsmithBirgit Pauli-HaackRaquel Landefeld

How much thread could a Twitter thread thread if a Twitter thread could thread thread Carolina Nymark shares some of the trends she's seeing with Full Site Editing themes in the repo. Data like, common block styles include button, post-title, and site-title. Check the Twitter thread for more. Allie Nimmons has a new role at MasterWP as their Digital Producer. Devin Walker, founder of GiveWP and WP Minute Producer, got the conversation going about the high-cost to sponsor WordCamp US by asking the question “Would you spend $30-60k to sponsor and only reach 650 people in person? “ See sponsorship rates here. (I have an answer: sponsor the WP Minute for a year instead!)  Captain Macho Pirate Mick Rackham real name Michael, pondered that Matt Mullenweg should purchase the Mozilla or at least become the primary funder, to which Mullenweg replied “Would happily do it.” Christina Warren penned a fantastic tweet thread in a response to last week's “WordPress losing market share” that Joost wrote about. Is WP really shrinking? Alex Denning wrote that a .4% drop doesn't matter. “We had no idea why the market share was growing, and we accordingly have no idea why it's shrinking.” Eric Karkovack aggregated a collection of articles on Authory, The Changing Landscape of WordPress. In other news Justin Tadlock leaves his position as 1 of 2 writers at the WP Tavern. In his farewell address he shares that he's published 647 articles during his tenure and also reveals, there's no one behind the proverbial green curtain: “From the day I arrived until today, I have had complete independence to thrive or fail by the result of my work. It felt like our small team had been left on an island to fend for ourselves at times. We must go through the same channels as other publications for information and have never been given special treatment.” Over on our blog, Eric Karkovak wrote that Freelancers are Caught in the Middle of WordPress Licensing Woes. If the recent MemberPress debacle had you feeling uneasy – this post is for you. Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Daniel SchutzsmithJeff ChandlerEric KarkovacRaquel LandefeldBrad WilliamsJoe Casabona

Reviewing Apple's new lower-cost iPhone, the iPhone SE. Meta (Facebook) plans to add new parental supervision controls to its Meta Quest (Oculus Quest) headset. Russians turn to the Clubhouse app for news and information. Automattic shares its vision of the Web by way of WordPress, Tumblr, Pocket Casts, and more. First, Geoffrey Fowler of the Washington Post joins Jason Howell and Mikah Sargent to talk about Apple's newly announced iPhone SE. While it might not be Apple's flagship phone, the lower-cost smartphone is sure to be a hit for budget-conscious consumers. Then, TechCrunch's Amanda Silberling stops by to discuss Meta's (Facebook's) new parental supervision tools. The social media company has announced a roll-out of several new tools and settings geared at giving parents and guardians more control over the content their kids consume on the Meta Quest (Oculus Quest) headset. Then, Jason talks about an uptick in usage for the social audio app Clubhouse. Russians and Ukrainians, alike, are using the app for news and information as Russian leadership seeks to shut down social media services in the country. Lastly, Mikah shares an interview from The Verge with Automattic's Matt Mullenweg. Mullenweg discusses his vision of the Web, shares his thoughts on web3, and highlights his appreciation of open-source software. Hosts: Jason Howell and Mikah Sargent Guests: Geoffrey Fowler and Amanda Silberling Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: progress.com/twit kolide.com/twit podium.com/twit

Reviewing Apple's new lower-cost iPhone, the iPhone SE. Meta (Facebook) plans to add new parental supervision controls to its Meta Quest (Oculus Quest) headset. Russians turn to the Clubhouse app for news and information. Automattic shares its vision of the Web by way of WordPress, Tumblr, Pocket Casts, and more. First, Geoffrey Fowler of the Washington Post joins Jason Howell and Mikah Sargent to talk about Apple's newly announced iPhone SE. While it might not be Apple's flagship phone, the lower-cost smartphone is sure to be a hit for budget-conscious consumers. Then, TechCrunch's Amanda Silberling stops by to discuss Meta's (Facebook's) new parental supervision tools. The social media company has announced a roll-out of several new tools and settings geared at giving parents and guardians more control over the content their kids consume on the Meta Quest (Oculus Quest) headset. Then, Jason talks about an uptick in usage for the social audio app Clubhouse. Russians and Ukrainians, alike, are using the app for news and information as Russian leadership seeks to shut down social media services in the country. Lastly, Mikah shares an interview from The Verge with Automattic's Matt Mullenweg. Mullenweg discusses his vision of the Web, shares his thoughts on web3, and highlights his appreciation of open-source software. Hosts: Jason Howell and Mikah Sargent Guests: Geoffrey Fowler and Amanda Silberling Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: progress.com/twit kolide.com/twit podium.com/twit

Reviewing Apple's new lower-cost iPhone, the iPhone SE. Meta (Facebook) plans to add new parental supervision controls to its Meta Quest (Oculus Quest) headset. Russians turn to the Clubhouse app for news and information. Automattic shares its vision of the Web by way of WordPress, Tumblr, Pocket Casts, and more. First, Geoffrey Fowler of the Washington Post joins Jason Howell and Mikah Sargent to talk about Apple's newly announced iPhone SE. While it might not be Apple's flagship phone, the lower-cost smartphone is sure to be a hit for budget-conscious consumers. Then, TechCrunch's Amanda Silberling stops by to discuss Meta's (Facebook's) new parental supervision tools. The social media company has announced a roll-out of several new tools and settings geared at giving parents and guardians more control over the content their kids consume on the Meta Quest (Oculus Quest) headset. Then, Jason talks about an uptick in usage for the social audio app Clubhouse. Russians and Ukrainians, alike, are using the app for news and information as Russian leadership seeks to shut down social media services in the country. Lastly, Mikah shares an interview from The Verge with Automattic's Matt Mullenweg. Mullenweg discusses his vision of the Web, shares his thoughts on web3, and highlights his appreciation of open-source software. Hosts: Jason Howell and Mikah Sargent Guests: Geoffrey Fowler and Amanda Silberling Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: progress.com/twit kolide.com/twit podium.com/twit

Reviewing Apple's new lower-cost iPhone, the iPhone SE. Meta (Facebook) plans to add new parental supervision controls to its Meta Quest (Oculus Quest) headset. Russians turn to the Clubhouse app for news and information. Automattic shares its vision of the Web by way of WordPress, Tumblr, Pocket Casts, and more. First, Geoffrey Fowler of the Washington Post joins Jason Howell and Mikah Sargent to talk about Apple's newly announced iPhone SE. While it might not be Apple's flagship phone, the lower-cost smartphone is sure to be a hit for budget-conscious consumers. Then, TechCrunch's Amanda Silberling stops by to discuss Meta's (Facebook's) new parental supervision tools. The social media company has announced a roll-out of several new tools and settings geared at giving parents and guardians more control over the content their kids consume on the Meta Quest (Oculus Quest) headset. Then, Jason talks about an uptick in usage for the social audio app Clubhouse. Russians and Ukrainians, alike, are using the app for news and information as Russian leadership seeks to shut down social media services in the country. Lastly, Mikah shares an interview from The Verge with Automattic's Matt Mullenweg. Mullenweg discusses his vision of the Web, shares his thoughts on web3, and highlights his appreciation of open-source software. Hosts: Jason Howell and Mikah Sargent Guests: Geoffrey Fowler and Amanda Silberling Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: progress.com/twit kolide.com/twit podium.com/twit

Reviewing Apple's new lower-cost iPhone, the iPhone SE. Meta (Facebook) plans to add new parental supervision controls to its Meta Quest (Oculus Quest) headset. Russians turn to the Clubhouse app for news and information. Automattic shares its vision of the Web by way of WordPress, Tumblr, Pocket Casts, and more. First, Geoffrey Fowler of the Washington Post joins Jason Howell and Mikah Sargent to talk about Apple's newly announced iPhone SE. While it might not be Apple's flagship phone, the lower-cost smartphone is sure to be a hit for budget-conscious consumers. Then, TechCrunch's Amanda Silberling stops by to discuss Meta's (Facebook's) new parental supervision tools. The social media company has announced a roll-out of several new tools and settings geared at giving parents and guardians more control over the content their kids consume on the Meta Quest (Oculus Quest) headset. Then, Jason talks about an uptick in usage for the social audio app Clubhouse. Russians and Ukrainians, alike, are using the app for news and information as Russian leadership seeks to shut down social media services in the country. Lastly, Mikah shares an interview from The Verge with Automattic's Matt Mullenweg. Mullenweg discusses his vision of the Web, shares his thoughts on web3, and highlights his appreciation of open-source software. Hosts: Jason Howell and Mikah Sargent Guests: Geoffrey Fowler and Amanda Silberling Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: progress.com/twit kolide.com/twit podium.com/twit

Reviewing Apple's new lower-cost iPhone, the iPhone SE. Meta (Facebook) plans to add new parental supervision controls to its Meta Quest (Oculus Quest) headset. Russians turn to the Clubhouse app for news and information. Automattic shares its vision of the Web by way of WordPress, Tumblr, Pocket Casts, and more. First, Geoffrey Fowler of the Washington Post joins Jason Howell and Mikah Sargent to talk about Apple's newly announced iPhone SE. While it might not be Apple's flagship phone, the lower-cost smartphone is sure to be a hit for budget-conscious consumers. Then, TechCrunch's Amanda Silberling stops by to discuss Meta's (Facebook's) new parental supervision tools. The social media company has announced a roll-out of several new tools and settings geared at giving parents and guardians more control over the content their kids consume on the Meta Quest (Oculus Quest) headset. Then, Jason talks about an uptick in usage for the social audio app Clubhouse. Russians and Ukrainians, alike, are using the app for news and information as Russian leadership seeks to shut down social media services in the country. Lastly, Mikah shares an interview from The Verge with Automattic's Matt Mullenweg. Mullenweg discusses his vision of the Web, shares his thoughts on web3, and highlights his appreciation of open-source software. Hosts: Jason Howell and Mikah Sargent Guests: Geoffrey Fowler and Amanda Silberling Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: progress.com/twit kolide.com/twit podium.com/twit

WordPress 5.9 Beta 4 was released this week. Sara Gooding over at the Tavern wrote that there are a few important changes to note in this release regarding how the WordPress admin will direct users who are exploring block themes. There is an incompatibility message for redirection depending on whether the theme is using blocks or the customizer. The release team has determined that a 5th beta will not be necessary and the official release is scheduled for January 25, 2022. Events The call for speakers is now open for WordCamp Europe 2022. We will have to keep an eye on how this in-person event will be safely organized. It appears that you will also be able to participate online. From Our Contributors and Producers A software vendor has lost a civil case in a first-time ruling by Italian courts on open source licensing. The case involved Ovation's GPL licensed Dynamic.ooo software, which is a plugin for the open-source Elementor platform for building WordPress websites. The software was distributed without including acknowledgment of the original work, including information about changes tthat he defendants had made to the software, and with no mention of the software's copyright holders. There is a fine levied against the defendants every day until the software is brought into compliance. WPCS.io, an Amsterdam-based provider of the world's first multi-tenant WordPress cloud platform to create SaaS solutions with WordPress, announced that they are raising a substantial seed investment from Arches Capital. WPEngine announced on their blog that they have acquired the Frost theme, adding to their open-source cache of WordPress solutions. This theme was created by Brian Gardner and focuses on block editing and the full site editor. Gardner re-joined WPEngine in late September of this year as Principal Developer Advocate. This ended his “gap year” after staying with WPEngine during a transition period of the hosting company acquiring StudioPress, a company he was a partner in previously. WPEngine will be issuing full refunds to active customers. Matt Mullenweg lays out a debate over the future of the internet. Mullenweg, Automattic CEO and WordPress founder, joins ‘TechCheck' to discuss the future of their internet. The WordPress developer explains the difference between open vs. closed platforms and which will see the most growth. This will be interesting to watch next year. Interesting TikTok news Is it possible that TikTok brought more traffic than Google this year? The viral video app seems to be on a high, finishing the year with the most cumulative internet traffic of any domain in the world — more so even than Google, which typically holds the number-one spot. Cloudflare reviewed how the Internet went for TikTok in 2021. Next up Michelle Frechette with a year-end wrap-up. Don't forget to read Michelle's contributor post: In-person events:

A major update coming to WordPress 5.8. Beta release 2 is available for testing now. This release expands WordPress' site building capabilities, along with improvements to features users have enjoyed since the launch of the block editor. The release will also include WebP support which 95% of the web browers worldwide use. Check out the WordCamp Europe 2021 Gutenberg demo narrated by Beatriz Fialho. WordPress Taverns’ Sarah Gooding recaps a discussion with Matt Mullenweg and Matias Ventura “The Block Editor Gets Ready to Become a Site Builder” A quote from Matt: For me, 2020 was the year that really felt like people started to see the vision of Gutenberg from four or five years ago, when it was very abstract and they saw it as kind of like the old WYSIWYG editor with some extra lines on it or something,” Mullenweg said. “The first 17 or 18 years of WordPress democratized people putting text into a box. Now we're democratizing design, allowing people to control the boxes.” This has been another huge project for the WordPress contributors and developers. Josepha Hayden Chomphosy is very transparent on the WP Briefing podcast about how difficult it is to run a large open source project and offers suggestions on how to get a big group of people to come to consensus. Eric Karkovick Editor, Writer & WordPress Expert at Speckyboy covers what WordPress acquisitions says about the future and states that the WordPress ecosystem is maturing and consolidating. “Frankly, it's becoming a lot harder for solo entrepreneurs or small development shops to manage a popular plugin. Supporting a large userbase while also focusing on the future could become overwhelming.Thus, it's not surprising to see that some of these products are being sold off to larger firms. We saw something similar happen with internet providers back in the early 2000s. The more mature the market, the harder it became for a small company to carry out its mission. Pretty soon, they were just about all bought up by corporate interests”. Alex Denning along with Iain Poulson tweeted last week that they have created FlipWP and For $300/year the duo will help connect WordPress product companies for sale, with would-be buyers. If all this talk about acquisitions every day has your brain tangled up, Chris Lema posted a straight forward Twitter thread to bring some clarity to this fast-paced space. There are a lot of discussions about companies (and hosts) acquiring folks in the #WordPress space. Now, new marketplaces are getting created to help you sell your company. All of this is great. But not all buyers are the same, and it's not always about the $$$.

At Jamstack Conf 2020, a fireside chat between WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg and Netlify CEO Matt Biilmann turned into a heated debate about WordPress and Jamstack. Matt Landers, Will Johnston, and Kellen Mace attempt to break down each of the other Matts' arguments, leading a discussion about when to use traditional WordPress over headless and where the rise of Jamstack fits into the larger WordPress development ecosystem.

Let's start with the good news, before we get into the…not so good news. Matt Mullenweg announced that CC Search is joining the WordPress project stating that the WordPress community has long advocated for a repository with GPL-compatible images. I think this is timely and needed with the not-so-recent announcement of Unsplash being acquired by Getty Images. Now time for the not so good news — What the FLoC?! First, what is FLoC? Well, here's the definition straight from Google: Federated Learning of Cohorts, FLoC enables ad selection without sharing the browsing behaviour of individual users. FLoC provides a privacy-preserving mechanism for interest-based ad selection. As a user moves around the web, their browser uses the FLoC algorithm to work out its “interest cohort”, which will be the same for thousands of browsers with a similar recent browsing history. The browser recalculates its cohort periodically, on the user's device, without sharing individual browsing data with the browser vendor or anyone else. One might think that sounds…okay? Well, until the Electronic Frontier Foundation chimes in stating FLoC is a terrible idea. “The third-party cookie is dying, and Google is trying to create its replacement.” “Google is leading the charge to replace third-party cookies with a new suite of technologies to target ads on the Web. And some of its proposals show that it hasn't learned the right lessons from the ongoing backlash to the surveillance business model.” “FLoC is meant to be a new way to make your browser do the profiling that third-party trackers used to do themselves: in this case, boiling down your recent browsing activity into a behavioral label, and then sharing it with websites and advertisers. The technology will avoid the privacy risks of third-party cookies, but it will create new ones in the process.” Alrighty, now I'm a little concerned along with WordPress contributors who want to treat FLoC more as a security concern than a privacy concern. Read through the comments to find the different takes around the community. There's even a Trac ticket to monitor the concern. Pull up a seat at the Tavern Pour yourself a cold one over some of this week's notable articles from the Tavern! The upcoming Pattern Directory is set to launch with WordPress 5.8. The Jetpack team has launched yet another project, called Jetpack Boost. Interesting to see them launch this as a standalone plugin since Mullenweg has always flexed on the fact that Jetpack is modular. An interesting conversation around banning companies that run competitive ads against WordPress from sponsoring WordCamps is open, well, until today. Check out the conversation happening in the thread on the post. I think on the surface that makes sense, but then there's also the grey area of even how Automattic leverages the cross-branding of WordPress. Time for the grab bag! Get Ellipsis https://getellipsis.com/blog/user-personas-for-wordpress-businesses/DoTheWoo https://dothewoo.io/wordpress-core-and-blocks-with-grzegorz-ziolkowski/GravityForms 2.5 https://www.gravityforms.com/two-five/Brainstorm Force https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLY_JnFeW7U ★ Support this podcast ★

After Automattic released their experiment with selling $5,000 websites, I published a video, I spell it wordpress now. A video which has been viewed over 1,400 times and caught the attention of today's guest, Matt Mullenweg co-creator of WordPress & Founder of Automattic. I've had the pleasure of interviewing Mullenweg back in 2015, and have consumed nearly every other podcast he's been featured on since. I thought about doing a more in-depth analysis on Matt's responses to my questions, but I'd rather let the content speak for itself, allowing you to digest our discussion then arrive at your own conclusions. Though there is one word that sticks with me, and that's: vulnerable. There are some vulnerable moments when discussing topics relating to blue collar digital workers — or builders/implementors — that could spark a change in Matt's long-term regard to a group of WordPress users that I feel control the under current of the CMS's adoption. Matt is also responsible for nearly 378,000* products under Autoamattic's umbrella, to which he informed there's a new internal initiative rolling out to help disperse some of the responsibilities not only from him, but the 1,400 other Automattician's. As for me, I do get very passionate about WordPress and my response to moments like these might do better if I sit on them a little longer or reach out to Matt directly. Who knows, maybe we'll get more podcast episodes out of it. I hope you enjoy today's episode, please share it with the world, and leave a comment on the post. Subscribe to my newsletter for more. ⭐️ THANK YOU to the sponsors!! ⭐️ The WP Minute – A new audio experience for WordPress news coming soon. Easy Support Videos – A fun way to support your customers inside WordPress with videos and text. show transcript show lessMatt Medeiros and Matt Mullenweg[00:03:42] Medeiros: [00:03:42] I'd say 99.999% of the folks listening today know who you are and what you do is there one thing people don't know. That you do.[00:03:51] Do you practice like jujitsu or are you a culinary master behind the scenes? Anything else that's new that people just might not know is like a hobby or something that you do really [00:04:00] well on the aside from work[00:04:01]Mullenweg: [00:04:01] Some people might know, but it's been so long now, but I know I want a jazz musician and that was how I got into building websites. And it's why releases a WordPress are named after jazz musicians.  Don't know if I can still call myself that, but I definitely was for a long time. And it's what I thought I was going to do professionally before.[00:04:18]I got into this web stuff.[00:04:20]Medeiros: [00:04:20] Look, I think a lot of folks think about this conversation and I don't know why, but they're there. I see comments. Like I can't wait for Matt to talk to Matt about this stuff and like really roll up their sleeves and get at it. I don't feel that way at all. In fact, I highly regard your position.[00:04:39] I think I've told you before. I wouldn't want your position. I know I wouldn't want to have to thwart the the comments that come at you every day and run a thousand ish person company. A lot of work. So I applaud you and really respect that position. I'm really interested to chat today and maybe see both sides of [00:05:00] our views and opinions and have a better understanding at the end of the day.[00:05:05]Mullenweg: [00:05:05] I think the mat squared report is a great recurring feature. So I'm sorry that we had some scheduling trouble, but glad that we could make it back on. Probably they thought that because I did leave that a pretty lengthy comment on your, I spell it WordPress video. Cause I disagreed with some points there, but it didn't feel thank you for responding.[00:05:23] I felt like you, you listened and you read it and maple loop to some of that as well.[00:05:28]Medeiros: [00:05:28] Before I get there, I want to tell you, I love simple note. Simple note is the app I use every single day of my life. I'm dying for more simple notes stuff. And this is a bigger question. Look, you're responsible for, by say you're responsible and maybe you can enlighten me. Maybe you're not responsible, but I feel like man, there's so much product.[00:05:54] Under Matt Mullenweg, WordPress, Automattic, .com all the offerings, [00:06:00] jetpack simple note, Tumblr, the list goes on happy tools, Jetpack CRM. there's so much where do you find yourself focusing that attention for like crazy simple note users like myself to say give us more.[00:06:15]Mullenweg: [00:06:15] The good news for something like simple note is it happens without me having to think about it. Cause I to a minute, 20 times a day, at least, and on all of the different devices. So I'm a very passionate user. Simpler does not where I. I consciously focus my time, but I was just talking to the team the other day about like changing where the search is on desktop, because we moved it to be more like a Mac iOS standard, but it's a little more confusing.[00:06:38] It's, that's like a fun thing for me. Maybe after hours. Some of the other products you mentioned tumbler, Woo, wordpress.com are more of an official part of my day. And the way I cover so much is just by having really fantastic teams and and folks I work with on every side of it whether that's Josepha on the .org side of things Paul Miorana on WooCommerce, the list [00:07:00] goes on and on.[00:07:00] Try to think of automatic as a fractal organization. We're about 1400 people. Now let's say a VIP's run running around 200 this week. That looks a lot like Automattic did when we were 200 people and Nick who runs that has a similar executive structure underneath him that I did when we were doing to people for the whole company or that rather Tony Schneider did.[00:07:20] So there's a lots of ways to approach it. And we found that form of scaling is a very effective and I really don't see a ceiling on it. We'll hire. And onboard probably 400 people this year. And it's that if you had told me that 10 years ago, that would seem completely crazy. And I wouldn't even know, I couldn't name 400 people in my life, let's just hire them.[00:07:44]And now it actually seems like a very natural progression of what we've been doing the past few years in terms of scaling the business.[00:07:51]Medeiros: [00:07:51] Do you look at these endeavors? And I think when I, of course now I'm forgetting the gentleman that I interviewed about simple note [00:08:00] I think you call them is it, are they called long bets? Is that like the code name internally?[00:08:04] Mullenweg: [00:08:04] internally we other bets.  The long bets would also be a great name and I'm part of the long now foundation. So that would be a good one. They are often long-term but there are things other than our main areas, which is basically consumers, subscriptions e-commerce and enterprise are the three main areas.[00:08:21] Automattic focuses on.[00:08:22] Medeiros: [00:08:22] And when you look to hire, is it primarily just Automattic, VIP? Folks are going to be focusing on your core focus other than let's say a simple note or a happy tool or something like that.[00:08:35]Mullenweg: [00:08:35] Much like we, we try to follow a five for the future for.org. Something we built into Automatic's culture is having a five for the future for our products. So that's other bets. So we try to have about 5% of the company focused just on contributing.org and then about 5% of the company working on things that are going from zero to one.[00:08:54] So they're there in that pre-product market fit phase of building things. [00:09:00] It's a little less right now. I think we're good on the.org side, but we're a little low on the other beds and that's just cause it's a, it's a. It's been a busy year. And particularly with things like the turnaround for Tumblr and others, we want to make sure that we have enough people on things to to see like an acquisition through it's. The biggest mistake companies usually make with acquisitions is it's been a ton of time leading up to it and buying the company and then they don't pay as much attention to it afterwards. And for example, for DME, what we want to make sure that we have. Yeah, the best team possible to grow that potential, which is it tens of millions of monthly active users blogging, which is really cool.[00:09:39] So let's get them the best are blogging capabilities. And then and see what happens.[00:09:44]Medeiros: [00:09:44] Is that something that when you look at Tumblr, do you look at. This might be getting it. I don't know, maybe into too much of the secret ingredients of all of this stuff. But does that look when you make an acquisition, like tumbler, do you say, yeah, we're going to run Tumblr as an independent business and [00:10:00] we will focus on that.[00:10:01]I, on his business model to monetize tumbler, or do you see that more of how do we integrate this more into a.com feature like tumbler powered by.com tumbler powered by Gutenberg? Like how do you see that synergy happening? If there even is one.[00:10:16] Mullenweg: [00:10:16] Yeah. We try to have kind of three or plans for every business where the first year is fairly high resolution and it gets a little fuzzy or there's further educate, which is okay. Same thing with acquisition, we try to say, okay, what step was the three applying for this on the three-year plan for Tumblr?[00:10:34]The initial parts are very much advertising focused since that's been their business model thus far. But as we get into year two, which we are now and three. I think there's a very interesting e-commerce and membership opportunity for tumbler and some really passionate creators, so much happening there.[00:10:50]So much culture is still happening on Tumblr and originate down tumbler. And then I have said publicly, and it's still on the roadmap to switch tumbler to be powered by WordPress. [00:11:00] So imagine I, how we have Calypso for wordpress.com, which is a JavaScript. Essentially clients to talk to multiple WordPress sites at once.[00:11:08] And it's what you load when you visit wordpress.com. It's totally open source is an equivalent. They call red pop, which is again, a react power JavaScript client to their API. Imagine that API or that client. So you have the exact same tumbler interface, but it's talking to a WordPress API instead.[00:11:24] That would be. Probable first step for how we start to switch over their sites, but there are a massive number of blogs, I think over half a billion. So obviously not all active, but it is a fairly large migration task. How will we do that?[00:11:39] Medeiros: [00:11:39] Yeah, certainly not just pick it up, throw it on your S3 bucket and off to the races you go for any stretch of the imagination. Let's talk more about the recent shift, or it's not even a shift, really, because as you said, this might just be an experiment with the I don't even know what your proper title of it is.[00:11:59] Is [00:12:00] website services by Automattic  or.com or something like that. I will try to quickly preface this to give you hopefully a bird's eye view of. my take and my reasoning for being so passionate about this stuff. First and foremost, love WordPress, defend WordPress, It doesn't matter what Hill I'm dying on.[00:12:21]It's old, he's WordPress. I'm a mentor in a local accelerator and, I see all these people going Wix and Squarespace, and I'm just like, you gotta use WordPress. And as painful as it might be for very beginner users, it's getting better. When I see in the impetus behind the original video, I spell it.[00:12:39] WordPress now. You have to take a look back at me years ago, as somebody who was trying to monetize WordPress plugin, trying to break into the space. There's a lot of threads of thought here, but it's just many years of. just not feeling appreciated is not the right word. It's the first one that comes to my [00:13:00] head.[00:13:00] But you try to submit a theme to the theme team. And you remember, this is decade ago. We don't like ads. We don't like upsells. There's this, you look@wordpress.org repository from a 50,000 foot view and wow, isn't this just themeforest now, tax me to be here. Happily pay the tax to be, to have an ecosystem that I can tap into Alyse Shopify in web flow and things like that.[00:13:26] And then I also see from the Shopify and Webflow side partnerships, open app store, like that kind of thing, being a lot more open, and what I feel is a constant shift into moving all things. The best WordPress experience, moving all things to jet pack and to wordpress.com. And then the icing on the cake is we'll build your website now.[00:13:52]So then I[00:13:53] Mullenweg: [00:13:53] lot going on there. I don't know if I agree with all those assumptions, but we can talk through[00:13:57] Medeiros: [00:13:57] there. There's a lot of deep roots here, Matt. So [00:14:00] I have this [00:14:00] Mullenweg: [00:14:00] we start 10 years ago[00:14:01] when you submitted the theme? [00:14:02] Medeiros: [00:14:02] 10 years ago. Blue collar, digital worker. That's the phrase that I use, I feel as a very underrepresented segment of even when automatic looks at the community, designers, developers like is probably like what, 80% of the core community. And then there's folks, [00:14:23] Mullenweg: [00:14:23] like the term [00:14:24] Medeiros: [00:14:24] to build, trying to build a business, trying to do things with WordPress and. It's that frustration. It's the weight of all of that,[00:14:34] I tweeted out the other day I was working on a friend site, had jet pack. It went to install a plugin and the message that on the plugin install screen said, Oh, by the way, I forget what the exact word is, but you could get exploited or malware through the plugins. Yes, but it's but Jetpack, you came from wordpress.org, who do I trust?[00:14:54]And it's those types of things that it's not these big things that happen. It's death by a thousand [00:15:00] paper cuts. And that's the feeling. It's a feeling that I think a lot of people, I know a lot of people feel and are frustrated by. And all of that bubbles up to, like me making a video, that thousand people watch and most of them agree.[00:15:18] That's how we got here at this moment in time, and that's the level of frustration. There's a lot to even like attack at that point or to respond to at that point. But I just wanted to lay it all out on the table for you. Is that how I've gotten to this point of feeling. Man, maybe it's the implementer.[00:15:38] Who's not very valuable in this community. And if it isn't that's okay. I'll leave the floor up to you to figure out which bone you want to pick out first.[00:15:47] Mullenweg: [00:15:47] to start. Let me start with what you called implementers, which I have to call builders. I do agree that they're not always the most prominent and like core discussions. Sometimes these [00:16:00] people are busy, they're building sites for people, so they might not be in our Slack or things like that.[00:16:05] I take it as a personal responsibility to stay very connected to that community and try to represent their needs and the core direction. I would argue that Gutenberg itself was largely in response to what I was hearing from, I would say smaller builders, shops, people one to 10 employees, building sites for five to $20,000.[00:16:35]It was that the numbers are going to be different internationally as well. So I, these numbers aren't necessarily useful, but No. I was hearing from them that they were starting to use third-party tools to build things, to save time for clients that clients they were having to build very complex things with advanced custom fields and other kind of like interfaces that weren't very WYSIWYG to help people create about pages or make it easier for [00:17:00] their clients to update.[00:17:01] And that was part of what brought us to Gutenberg. I was saying, there is a easier WYSIWYG ish way to approach some of these problems that doesn't need someone on a random database form fields is something that looks like PHP, my admin to update their about page versus, something where you're actually seeing the images and like it's more one-to-one with What you're building, what the other good news is that I hear a lot from this community. So for whatever reason, they find my contact form and Twitter handle, and I get a lot of DMS. And  that's obviously not fully representative, but I do feel like I get a little more feedback from that section of the many stakeholders that WordPress has.[00:17:40]A good mountain. I would love more. So there's anyone listening to this that wants to just share with me your story about how WordPress is working or not for you, your favorite plugins, all this stuff like what's beautiful is every story is valid and whatever someone's feeling is what they're feeling.[00:17:57] So it's true. And these [00:18:00] antidotes one we can digest enough of them so often can show patterns that can be really useful. For determining what is a future focus for WordPress,  the four phases of Gutenberg post and page editing, full site editing essentially workflow.[00:18:16] And then multi-lingual a hundred percent. And for the feedback I've gotten from various constituents, since the WordPress community now WordPress is not one thing over another. We are open source, everyone can and does use the software and. I think one of the beautiful tension that we maintain how I like to put it is every single release, making it more accessible and easier for people new to WordPress and more powerful and flexible for those who are familiar with WordPress already.[00:18:46]I think a lot about interfaces, not just being easy, but being intuitive so that whether you're seeing, what have you been using WordPress for one day or 10 years? When you come across a new feature, a new interface, you can [00:19:00] have some guideposts to how to use it. That addresses very one small part of what you said, but I don't want to talk for 10 minutes, so I just I'll throw it back to you.[00:19:08]Medeiros: [00:19:08] There's a camp of people who are like, man, something happens  my video or this, tiny little blip on the radar, this jet pack thing, but jet pack is much larger. It is the monetization play. I'll say it, I guess you could say no, but it's the monetization play from automatic to say we've got all of these free WordPress sites out there.[00:19:29] How do we monetize it? Yes. How do we make the experience better for the consumer, but also how do we monetize this? It's a perfectly finding that the thing is quite obvious at this point, but anything that ever happens in this space to defend you, people go, it's just, it's, he's just going to make money with this stuff.[00:19:45] I don't really care about that side of it. You an Automattic, there's nothing wrong with that. In my eyes, it is, the lack of that connection to looking at the community members [00:20:00] and saying, how will this impact, how will this impact them? And I think. People forget that, like now you are a 1500 person company.[00:20:10]Matt is no longer in the room with us building WordPress with us anymore. It's a totally like it was maybe 20 years ago. It's a totally different ball game. Now there's a lot of things at play. When you look at what Shopify does, and I guess here's a more direct question when you look at what Shopify does or what Webflow does with their.[00:20:28] Partnerships in their communities. Do you ever see yourself going in that direction or even formalizing a marketplace on wordpress.org to just have a component that I can just bolt into and say here's 30% for automatic. Here's 70% for me. And we do business that way.[00:20:48]Mullenweg: [00:20:48] Good set of questions there. One for the staying in touch point of view, one thing I think, which has allowed WordPress to be a lot more adaptable is the accessibility of the people building it, no matter, [00:21:00] even if you're a very large store on Shopify, you can't join Shopify, Slack where they're building it.[00:21:06] And DM Toby, he's a nice guy, but there's not the level of flexibility, but if you wanted to join a WordPress out of work, Slack and DME, and you can. And by the way people do that. So don't be shy there. I also tried to be on the post status Slack, that I tried to be very accessible because I love to learn.[00:21:23] I love to read. So those are just things that are part of a good feedback loop. And I would say that applies to, if you look at the 500 plus people who were part of the last word, press release You could get in touch with pretty much any of them. And that's pretty special. There's very few things like that on internet.[00:21:42] Certainly the scale of the WordPress is [00:21:45] Medeiros: [00:21:45] yeah, when I'm mad at my iPhone, I can't, Hey, Tim want to be on my podcast, like that's not happening. So I totally appreciate this connection. And the value of that in the community.[00:21:57] Mullenweg: [00:21:57] And it's things like the podcast, but it's also the little [00:22:00] things,  The one thing you said was the marketplace. We've always kept wordpress.org in particular free Joe people pay 0% and there's businesses making tens of millions of dollars a year on there. And they're not paying anything to automatic or anyone else.[00:22:16]There's so there's not really any plans to. To build a billing system or charge for things I think is also perfectly fine that third-party marketplaces like at the forest spring out and they take their 30% or whatever the percentage that's fine. Again, tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollar businesses built on top of WordPress and they that's one of the freedoms to do I don't see WordPress being held back by the lack of our marketplace on the automatic side. There we do run marketplaces. So there's the marketplace, there's a WooCommerce marketplace. So there are different areas where we can provide access to a lot of users, maybe a one-click checkout experience.[00:22:57] And then there's a revenue share for that. I love those [00:23:00] models because it's like what you said, people make money together. Hopefully we're selling things that we're in, we're selling to customers that would be hard to reach otherwise. And hopefully the customer's getting value to that.[00:23:10] And there can be a win-win. I don't see it again, Shopify you could ask a lot of the partners and they're not crazy about that. Remember famously MailChimp and Shopify did that big break up that was around very onerous terms from Shopify.  The participation in the marketplace and what that rev share with even MailChimp.[00:23:28]Shopify is also, I think a good example of almost an Amazon like marketplace, which allows a bit of freedom in the marketplace and then copies it and crushes the people in the community. That I haven't really seen happen in the WordPress community, even when automatic has moved into something like a WooCommerce.[00:23:47] Easy digital downloads still seems to be doing great. And the other e-commerce plugins in the marketplace. So I don't look to them as models as a good thing,  and also like the Apple app store, like the [00:24:00] fact that WordPress itself almost got banned from the store. Like I really much prefer the more open source open access.[00:24:06]There is some trade off there in terms of if someone does want a commercial solution, they might need to sign up for a new site and put their credit card in again. But to me that's getting easier and easier with Apple pay and other things.[00:24:19]Medeiros: [00:24:19] Would you say that? And I think one of the statements that came out of our last conversation almost five years ago was, and I think it's even more true today is. Jet pack is the best way to experience WordPress[00:24:33]Mullenweg: [00:24:33] I think of WordPress plus Jetpack is really compelling.[00:24:37] Medeiros: [00:24:37] because if I were your marketing person, that's what I'd be saying. A jet pack is the best way to experience WordPress and. So now let's lay a foundation to that.  If all of a sudden .org had a marketplace tomorrow, it would probably impact, people maybe even turning to jet pack or potentially even utilizing some of the features of jet pack.[00:24:57]The feeling of [00:25:00] frustration that a user has, I think, is a benefit to jet pack. I've got 10 plugins from 10 different authors. And now I have to go and knock on Pippin's door. I have to knock on Yoast's door, I have to go to Syed's for opt-in monster. And I'm like, Hey guys, what? It's not working on my site.[00:25:17] How do I get this working? [00:25:18] Mullenweg: [00:25:18] Yeah. [00:25:19] Medeiros: [00:25:19] Your longterm success with Jetpack is to smooth all those edges out and say, you know what? We have everything here. So it's almost that Amazon model where it's like, Hey, we see forms are working really well. Let's get forms in here. We see CRM. This is the craziest one of,  I'll admit we see CRMs are working.[00:25:38] Let's bring CRM jet pack in, and it's a fair statement to say that all roads leading to jet pack is to make that experience. It's better. True. False.[00:25:47]Mullenweg: [00:25:47] trying to follow. But I would say is part of what jet pack was created was what the common complaint of things not working together with each other. The vast majority of plugins that people use are free [00:26:00] plugins, not the commercial ones. The commercial ones are the small minority. And so it's not necessarily paid things, interrupting but it's really just stuff working together.[00:26:11]The other thing that Jetpack was created for it is to, important things that need a SAS service How can we provide those? Anti-spam being a great example. We're plugging approaches to anti-spam had been ineffective, but the kind of, AI approach that kismet takes, which is part of Jetpack has been very effective over now, 15 years.[00:26:32]So how can we essentially fund those and a Robin Hood's been in the news for the wrong reason, but let's go back to the story of Robin hood.  Like what's the bare minimum we can charge for, to subsidize providing a service for free. To 99% of users. And maybe that's another differentiation from like Amazon prime, where everyone pays dues, Amazon prime, 99% or more of Jetpack users are free.[00:26:56] So really it's a little bit of a hack in that. [00:27:00] There are certain SAS things that I think make WordPress a lot more compelling that if we charged for it, probably make a lot of if we charged for stats or some of the things that are built into free Jetpack probably make a lot of money. But WordPress would be smaller.[00:27:14] And my goal, which means it's Automattic's goal and also a lot of WordPress, the goal  We want as many WordPress's in the world and I think it's good to put in context. And like you mentioned there were some people that were took the conclusion that you did around like the Jetpack notice.[00:27:32] That got fixed really quickly, but maybe  the build it for me program, or they do it for me program. The 5k we'll build a site for you as like some sign of a larger conspiracy or that we're being evil or that we're holding back this important part of WordPress, or we don't care about that anymore.[00:27:49]But over the past 12, 13 months, there've been over 400,000 sites in the top 10 million that have been come onto WordPress. That's 400,000 high end [00:28:00] sites. Each one of those spending probably at least 10,000 a year to build, to maintain, to hiring people. And that's, when you get into the likely millions of people who are making their living in and around WordPress yeah, a few of 'em get worked up on Twitter and by the way, I'm part of this too, I'll reply to quickly.[00:28:17] And then that kind of escalates. And but if we zoom out a little bit and look at. What's happened? What are the large numbers happening? Even the most controversial video or something like that is probably two or three orders of magnitude smaller than just the number of sites built in the past year.[00:28:36] And the thing I just ask people to remember as well is that Twitter is a little bit designed to get people worked up. That is his business model. And by the way, I know this, but it happens to me too. And it's just I think it's the length, it's short, it's hard to have a nuanced conversation like we're having now and even 280 characters.[00:28:55] It is the algorithm for promoting these hot takes and controversy. [00:29:00] It's the context, meaning that I maybe saw like a political thing or an environment, like something that got me really rattled up. Two tweets before I saw the screenshot of the Jetpack notice. And yeah, maybe I do believe that there's a vast conspiracy by oil companies to.[00:29:16] Trick is that recycling is a thing when it's really just a way to sell more plastic and like we have to fight this. And I'm really worried that personally about that. It's a true thing, by the way. And then I see this Jetpack notice and I'm like, Oh, there's another one. This is just as bad as Exxon and Chevron and all the, all the kind of like grand conspiracies and the Davos and the Illuminati or whatever it might be like.[00:29:37] It's easy to draw lines between things that. Things that might be large and small can seem really large on Twitter. And and then things happen quickly. The what's the old saying like disinformation can get, make its way around the world before the truth has a chance to put his pants on.[00:29:53] There's just the. What it rewards moving quickly versus the [00:30:00] truth, which gets out there very slowly. I experienced that really toughly. There's something really tough. It might've been definitely in the past 18 months where there was someone who tweeted accusation that automatic had fired our African-American editor of one of our publications and this got over a thousand retweets more than that likes it was yeah, it was around the time that there was all social unrest and riots and everything like that.[00:30:28] And so there was a huge pile on to this. It was factually untrue. The person replied, she had actually taken a job. Preserved foods left for a higher, more prominent job. And the original person who tweeted this actually replied a correction as well. So to their credit, like corrected this misinformation that correction got five retweets. So it was literally like a 200 to one ratio of the. The controversial, but untrue thing, so that true, but maybe a little less [00:31:00] of a salacious story thing that went out there. And that really broke my heart as well, because that's obviously an issue that's near and dear to the hearts of many people.[00:31:10] And especially over the past year. And to know that there might have been folks who might've applied for automatic and then saw that and said, Oh, this isn't a place that's going to be welcoming to me.  Was just despondent. So it's just a good example of that. There's also someone usually on the other end of these tweets, like in the jet pack example, like someone who made that example, the person who fixed it, like within 24 hours, like we should remember this humans on the other side,[00:31:36] Medeiros: [00:31:36] right. Yeah. And definitely appreciate the team that, that adjusted that I would say for the record that I'm not spreading disinformation or cosmetic conspiracy[00:31:45] Mullenweg: [00:31:45] do use your crushers. I appreciate.[00:31:47]Medeiros: [00:31:47] That I tried to do this stuff. I am very passionate about it. Yes. And I can only make assumptions. The  what I will say is I think that in the longterm where you might not [00:32:00] call jet pack a direct competitor, I would say that there will be a market correction.[00:32:06]As Jetpack solves things like grab like forms better or galleries better, or I dunno, some other feature in there better than let's say Pippin's plugins. Eventually. I feel like the advantage that Jetpack has in both a brand and positioning that we'll see a correction of maybe losing three of these smaller product companies.[00:32:30] In the longterm as jet pack becomes much more mature, much more fortified. Is that fair?[00:32:36]Mullenweg: [00:32:36] I do worry about that, but it is a very, long-term worry. Meaning at the point when we're unable to add new users have worked for us[00:32:45] Medeiros: [00:32:45] Right?[00:32:46] Mullenweg: [00:32:46] and that's remember, there's still 6.9, 9 billion people who haven't used WordPress yet. So we have a ways to go, but for extremely mature technology companies, Facebook has 2 billion people, daily active users, they're running out of people.[00:32:58] And so it is much more zero sum. [00:33:00] One thing that it was cool about all the year-end wrap-ups that got posted from the different commercial companies, the volunteers, everything of the people in WordPress community last year, which by the way, it was a challenging year for humanity. Was a pretty good year for all of the businesses you just mentioned and also a good year for automatic.[00:33:17]As we expand the pie, everyone's portion of the pie can also keep growing without a necessarily be a zero sum between them. We can work in these economics of abundance versus economics of scarcity. And that's why if I get ever criticized. For really prioritizing growing the number of numbers of users of WordPress.[00:33:38]It is true. It is very important to me that we at in our mission to democratize publishing that we bring more people on the WordPress, the platform. I think it's, is it a trailing indicator of us doing our job of creating good product? Also keeps the companies from it allows us to work together a lot more.[00:33:54]Even one thing that's beautiful and WordPress direct competitors work together all the time. Hosting companies that are literally selling [00:34:00] the exact same thing. We'll have developers coordinating on a new feature. I also will say yourself included that WordPress is blessed with a really great media.[00:34:09]We have had in the past say a few years, some of the polarization where the, of the world seep into our communities where we're fast to jump to conclusions or create sides on things. But at the same time I've never run into someone in the WordPress kind of public space or things like that, that didn't really care about the truth as well.[00:34:31] And was, it was willing to update their worldview based on new information. And I hope myself included. I can demonstrate that I'll have strong opinions, but loosely held if new information is there, I want to update my, my view of reality because. If I am far from reality, that's going to be bad for myself and everyone involved, everyone that have influence over where the closer I can be to understand reality the better and my [00:35:00] role in responsibility as a leader within this community, I can help navigate and focus my attention and my contributions to whatever's most con  constructive for all the stakeholders and WordPress community.[00:35:13] Medeiros: [00:35:13] I'd say that I have a good understanding of your view of jet pack so far I'm not fully convinced that maybe not maybe saying even reached the resolution on the implementer or the builder's space and the connection there and that's okay. What I want to[00:35:29] Mullenweg: [00:35:29] a good question to ask though. Automatic is a business and does move into business areas. Has any business automatic moved into so far, the elimination of all its competitors. Have the host grown or shrunk since wordpress.com started are the other foreign plugins doing better or worse than Jetpack forum started?[00:35:49] Like you can almost look at every single example. We, my experience has been that automatic entering a place generally grows the market. Doesn't operate in a zero sum way. [00:36:00] Enterprise is the same way.  Think this came up, actually, it was a great tweak correction. It might've been Bridget or someone who said, automatic copy the, I forget what it was and I don't want to misquote it.[00:36:08] But basically the implication was we moved into enterprise space and took the oxygen out of the room from these companies I 10 up and others. And in fact, all those companies started after cross hybrid, et cetera, started after VIP. And I think VIP has been a big contributor to their business growing and scaling.[00:36:24]Medeiros: [00:36:24] One of the things that I think that I've often talked about again, when for some reason people ask me like, what your thoughts are. I don't know I don't know what[00:36:30] Mullenweg: [00:36:30] You are an influencer.[00:36:32] Medeiros: [00:36:32] name. The people say don't you think it's just because,  they want to IPO and they want to do all of this and they have this investments and they need to pay back the investors and that kind of thing.[00:36:43] My hunch is that you've had tyranical capitalism knocking at the door to try to do something with core WordPress, wordpress.org and with Woo commerce, and the only like real painting I've [00:37:00] illustrated to myself and to maybe others is that, that you are actually defending. From, the monetization of core WordPress or, this aggressive capitalistic play on monetizing WordPress.[00:37:12] I think that you might be actually defending, I can't imagine the amount of emails you've deleted, where people wanted to throw money at you for the sake of the greater good being WordPress of course. And it's four freedoms. But there has to be some loss there. And I think maybe the loss is we're going to defend this thing called WordPress and to appease investors.[00:37:34] And it's not even a piece, it's not even the right word, but we're going to show them. We have this thing called Jetpack. That is Matt's defense. Your defense to say, look, we don't look guys. Don't worry about trying to monetize wordpress.org or WooCommerce directly. Let me show you Jetpack instead as a way to defend WordPress with the unfortunate cannon fodder being the implementer or the business person.[00:37:58] And I don't even at [00:38:00] not even saying that this is a bad thing, because I can't even imagine how many times you've had to defend and put a fence around people who have said, if you just put an ad right here, you could make $5 million a month by putting a buy now on the install, WordPress page or something like that.[00:38:16]It's, that's a feeling of mine. I have obviously, no. Insight into that, but you can either speak to that or not, but I feel like that is Jetpack is is a great way for you to say save the core WordPress open source. This is what I focus on. If we're not talking about Jetpack, we're not talking about investing in, in, in automatic or even looking at WooCommerce, that kind of thing.[00:38:39] Do you think that's fair?[00:38:40]Mullenweg: [00:38:40] Yeah, there. Yeah. So I would say a weakness of mine is I'm not building websites anymore for $25 an hour.  I've been very fortunate even outside of WordPress with my investments and everything like that to essentially be a lottery winner. And so since. My early twenties. I have not been motivated by [00:39:00] more money cause I have more than any one person could need, but really motivated by the impact of my work and the things I'm supporting in a part of in the world.[00:39:11] And the toughest thing within any open source or any open community is essentially commercial interests. That take too much for themselves without putting enough back. That's why we have the fire for the future program. It's amazing that all it takes is 5% 95% could be doing whatever. But if every company in the WordPress community did put that 5% in WordPress would actually be, I would say three to five times larger than it is today.[00:39:42]We have some amazing companies, the tinnitus, the Yost automatics that do a lot of this. And I hope that more and more joining the suture as they see those companies also do really well. But. That is my motivation. So that, I guess the bright side of that is it would be really hard to bride me.[00:40:00] [00:40:00] The downside of that is that I do need to do extra work, to stay in touch with the builders with everyone else that you talked about the other companies. And so that's why I just try to have that open door policy and know I had a zoom with one of the With a large agency folks yesterday and just hearing like, how's your business going?[00:40:18] How's, what's the latest, what's the, what are they hearing from their clients? What are they building on Gutenberg versus others? How are they bidding against other things in the market? How's Adobe experience manager doing? So these things are really helpful because I do have the part of the world that I work in every day.[00:40:33] And and so I need help to stay connected to all the rest of the things going on in WordPress.[00:40:37]Medeiros: [00:40:37] You said your one week, that was one week. I think, man, you do a lot. You do too much, Matt. You do too much like that. You let it go. Like you said, you were very, you felt very personally responsible for the builders. When I jokingly, maybe it doesn't come off as a joke and I'd say things like a PR agency or stuff like that, like I think.[00:40:54] You need to just give someone that role to really stay grounded [00:41:00] to that, and then maybe report to you or something like that. I feel like you, I, this is just me speaking bluntly. I feel like you wear too many hats but kudos to you for balancing it for 20 years.  [00:41:10] Mullenweg: [00:41:10] So I'm always putting hats on and taking hats off.[00:41:13]A good example is I was actually personally running wordpress.com last year. And so that was a lot of work. [00:41:19] Medeiros: [00:41:19] Yeah. [00:41:19] Mullenweg: [00:41:19] And, part of doing that was also identifying someone I could pass that hat to. Actually we just started a new framework inside automatic called hats. That sort of shows that like many roles, especially in a fast growing company, you might take on and put off without necessarily a title change or something like that. So we need to be flexible to do things differently. I really do look up to, these are flawed role models, but folks like.[00:41:45]Elon Musk or bill Gates, or, folks who are, can say highly, technically connected to every single part of the business, and then use that knowledge to help navigate, because I do believe that the more layers of [00:42:00] abstraction you're dealing with the further away from reality you are and the harder it is to understand what's really going on.[00:42:06]So we do, we do obviously hire lots of people that do the things I used to do things instead of me But occasionally I feel, and for any leaders listening to this it's it's good to dive down into the details. I was doing some live chat support last week. Yeah. I'm hoping to do some more this week.[00:42:20] So if you chatted with wordpress.com support, you might've gotten me is that the most valuable use of my time? If it were 40 hours a week now, but if it were a couple of hours a month, Oh it's invaluable. I think it's actually one of the most valuable things I do. So it's I would say, think about even when you scale to thousands of people, how you can stay connected to the core of your business, which is really the customer[00:42:42]Medeiros: [00:42:42] I think maybe one of the things that be coming out of 90, and we're not even out of the pandemic yet, but we're go through those that this whole last year and seeing so many.  People that I've seen on Twitter saying, look, the client business has dried up I say, man, wouldn't it be great. If [00:43:00] instead of automatic launching their division of $5,000 websites, there was this collection  of building and boutique agencies that could satisfy the needs of a $0 to $5,000 website.  And lift these people up. Who've been, cheerleaders for WordPress for many years.[00:43:19] Mullenweg: [00:43:19] I a hundred percent agree with you there.[00:43:21]So I think we're in total agreement. It's just an order of operations, to, to launch the test, we've done things like Jetpack pro and other things to pick up pro and others that essentially build an agency list. Obviously the enterprise side of the business works with dozens of partners there and sends all that out.[00:43:38]But for this, which is literally a test with one or two people working on it, it was easier to work with an Upworker, a codeable to try to see if we'd get that funnel. Because it's no good for us to bring in 20 or a thousand agencies, if there's only five clients a month going through it. We need to flow first.[00:43:53] And so just from the order of building it, like to test this concept, to see whether this is even something people signing up for wordpress.com want [00:44:00] it was just, what the resources, this thing was, I really did mean it was an experiment when it's very much to go. I think that's when you start to say, okay, how do we open this up?[00:44:09] It is very clear. And I've said this before automatic is not a consulting company. We're not a people shop and we're very much all about technology and engineering and algorithms and that sort of deep tech and SAS services and that sort of stuff is where we're always going to focus. So any place where we're able to send out consulting or building or something that we're going to look for the opportunities to do because that's just how we've.[00:44:37] Define the business. It is pretty core to our identity. There's also things like jobs.wordpress.net that we do need to loop back on and do a better job of I noticed actually as part of that discussion that the LinkedIn jobs, that word presented had fallen off the footer of wordpress.org, by the way, for those who don't know, which probably almost everyone, this is a free job listing site where people can list.[00:44:58] People they want to hire or look for [00:45:00] jobs in the WordPress world. That's, you're probably be  way better. Maybe also someplace where we charged the minimum amount to keep out spam and stuff. So that might be, someplace where we say it's $5 to list your job or something that just goes to the WordPress foundation.[00:45:12] But again, if we ever charge for things, it's usually for They keep the quality high, like why do we charge for our camp tickets it's so we can properly plan for how much food to buy and how many t-shirts to order, because when you make a totally free, a lot of people sign up and don't show up.[00:45:26] So if we charge 20 to 25 bucks, it's not going to keep anyone from going, you get by the way, probably $500 or a thousand dollars worth of value from that. But allows for less wastage in the planning. So sometimes if you do see a charge on the.org side of things, it's usually for that reason then necessarily trying to.[00:45:44] Create a marketplace or something. And a lot of people don't know this, but.org doesn't have the WordPress foundation has no full-time employees. There's zero. And so that is a design goal. So when you say make a marketplace, it's already even a small marketplace, I need to hire 20. Or [00:46:00] twenty-five people building the billing systems, handling refunds, doing support, all these sorts of things.[00:46:03] And we do try to keep the employee base of the word presentation. Totally zero. Now we have lots of people working full-time on WordPress, but they are generally. Sponsored or volunteering or doing that as part of they're employed by someone else. So that's just also something good to put out there because a lot of people don't realize that[00:46:21]Medeiros: [00:46:21] Let me just drill down on that one that one specifically, because it was a note that I had, but I skipped over it, the quick story is I remember years ago.[00:46:28] And let's talk about some of the, the frustration of a product person. This should have gone earlier in the conversation, but the frustrations of a WordPress product person, stemming from some of the experiences we, it's not just me, it's many others openly blogged about it.[00:46:42]Spending a theme to wordpress.org many years ago. I remember the theme that I put in was called journal, right? We're writing it, we're making a journal. And someone said. Now that name is too too vague, too ambiguous, right? We have to get something tighter and then Mo and then months later, I saw a theme get approved [00:47:00] called paper, and I was going, wait a minute, journal paper.[00:47:04] What's the difference? So it's these, this is a small blip in the galaxy  of events, but it's those types of things where it's largely led by volunteers. And people should not be upset of the volunteers. It's the nature of the structure. And this is where I think people turn to and say if you made it a paid marketplace, there would be.[00:47:26] There's probably, and you probably know this better than I do. It's probably a billion dollars that flows through wordpress.org. There's probably something in there where we could carve out some money to pay for a team. It's not an easy task, but one that I think would still be very profitable.[00:47:40] I could be totally wrong. So that is a feeling and it's not just me. This is many people echo this feeling of why is it free? Why is it volunteered? Why are they making decisions? Commercially based decisions, those types of things. [00:47:53] Mullenweg: [00:47:53] It's it's a, it's one of the, I think biggest mistakes I seen as a meme, the WordPress world that [00:48:00] free can not mean high quality. And I think WordPress itself. Largely developed by volunteers. Again, 95% of the contributors are not paid or sponsored by any company that you can actually have something that's world-class, the equivalent of millions of dollars of value.[00:48:17] If you were paying Adobe or someone for a CMS that wasn't as good as WordPress developed for free by volunteers, Wikipedia, like there's so many examples, Bitcoin, gosh doing that, never underestimate, underestimate. The power of people, passionate about an area working on it together for love, not money and doing so in a way where the ownership is shared.[00:48:41]So if anything, I want to encourage a lot more of that. It doesn't mean people can't make money. It just means that let's never assume that just because something is free. A free theme. Can't be the best darn theme in the world. The free page builder, can't be the best darn page builder, not just in the WordPress world, but in the entirety of all CMS, it's a with [00:49:00] Gutenberg.[00:49:00] So there's ways to do it. And so if you ever find yourself saying that, just question that assumption. Cause there's so many counterfactuals to it.[00:49:06]Medeiros: [00:49:06] Do you ever feel like. You're just getting started with WooCommerce. Like when you just take a step back and you look at, and you go, man, I haven't even done anything. And again, people ask me all the time. What do you think Matt is doing with WooCommerce? Like I know, I feel like you have the same challenges.[00:49:26] A lot of us product people have where you have money. But you just can't get enough darn people on this thing at the same time to get this thing moving. It's a very similar challenge to maybe even Pippin's plugins and SIADH and Yoast. It's not the money. It's the time. It's the people and getting that all in sync.[00:49:47]What are your thoughts on WooCommerce? Just getting started or however you see it.[00:49:54] Mullenweg: [00:49:54] it's day one with all commerce, the, when you look at the potential there [00:50:00] I often say that we're WooCommerce is where WordPress was in 2008. I would say that's for software maturity in terms of like where sort of percent of the market that it's captured, it's where WordPress wasn't like 2003, what?[00:50:14] It was like B2, plus some hacks. There's just so much there and probably a good place to mention that automatic is hiring for 30 or 40 open roles. So whatever is, you're a copywriter. If you're a support person, if you're person like, we are hiring as fast as possible. And and a lot of those new hires are going into the WooCommerce side of things.[00:50:33] So if you're interested in that, it is it's the largest rocket ship I've ever been a part of. And if we do it right, it is not just bigger than all the rest of automatics businesses combined, but probably maybe like a. Two to 10 X bigger.[00:50:51]Medeiros: [00:50:51] That's tremendous. One of the things. Speaking of products. I wish you put more money into things like video press was a [00:51:00] phenomenal product, but it's all integrated into Jetpack. Now with this rise in a video and all of this stuff is that just going to be a long-term bet or is, do you not see like that chunk  of Jetpack or the business being something that's a very alluring right now?[00:51:17] Mullenweg: [00:51:17] Yeah, just to give two little previews for your audience.  Cool update the video press conference. It is very eminent, good player, especially is so much cooler so much nicer. It feels even more modern than like a YouTube player. Continuous updates to the infrastructure. So we're making as automatic builds out its global network.[00:51:35] I think we're 30 plus points of presence globally. If you look at DNS perf we're usually second to only CloudFlare or Google for how fast the network is, it's a kind of hidden part of automatic. Then I'm really proud of that. Not a lot of people know about. So look for that to be a lot faster.[00:51:51] And then finally as you probably see with Jetpack CRM, Jetpack backup, a few things is we're making it so you can both buy and [00:52:00] install these things. All a cart.  Don't think video press is still standalone plugin right now, but essentially what we've been doing with Jetpack is architecting it.[00:52:07] So if people just want one of these features, they could just install that, add on a plugin much like Jetpack backup for CRM or how kismet and Jetpack interact.  We want to get people the flexibility. To pick and choose just what they want because I do it's not entirely true because Jetpack has its own internal plugin system.[00:52:27] So if you're only using one module, the rest of the code has been loaded. It's not somebody on your side at all. But I do get the perception where people will like, does 20 things while using five of them. So yeah, ways that we can break it up, I think are are helpful. Aye. There still is.[00:52:41]The truth is that if you install Jetpack and the CD and everything go make your site faster, though. And I think a lot of people, I appreciate that people can start different benchmarks and things to overcome the the myth that Jetpack slows your site down. When in fact it actually speeds it up.[00:52:54]Medeiros: [00:52:54] I don't do bonus rounds anymore, but here it is. I totally side with you on the [00:53:00] The other Matt and Matt feud with the JAMstack stuff. Look, I, again, diehard a WordPress fan. When I start to see all of these points of services connecting together, just for me to publish a website, I'm like, what's the point?[00:53:13] I can do it all with WordPress. And the note. And so they're getting to the question the no code, low code movement. Is phenomenal right now. I feel it's again, like you were saying, like it's like WordPress 2004, when everyone was like, look what I can build with advanced custom fields in WordPress.[00:53:30]Arguably WordPress, probably the best no-code low-code tool that's that's been in existence for for 20 years. [00:53:37] Mullenweg: [00:53:37] But maybe we have the worst marketing team. So we've got some things we can learn there.[00:53:41]Medeiros: [00:53:41] And I see all these people putting,  Hey, I'm using web flow, I'm using air table. And then I'm coupling that with a gum road and MailChimp. And and I'm looking at it, just, my head is hurting but you don't own any of these points in your stack that you could do with WordPress.[00:54:00] [00:54:00] And I guess the frustration. Is that a lot of people look at it and go, geez. I don't think I can do this with WordPress or WordPress is too slow, too. Yada, whatever they have to say. It's an amazing time. Do you feel like the no code, low code movement is a fad? Do you see all of these things going away to a degree[00:54:19] Mullenweg: [00:54:19] some of the companies are fats. The movements is basically the movement. It's a multi-decade movement that WordPress has been surfing, which is this idea that things you used to have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to do. Sometimes software, I can make it with a few clicks you can do.[00:54:39] And that's so empowering. That's a promise where to see technology at its best when it essentially gives super powers to people. That's what we mean by democratization is it's providing a freedom of expression capabilities that wouldn't be there without the software. And so that, it's been rebranded recently.[00:54:58] He's like low-code or no-code [00:55:00] you are correct that WordPress is. In many ways, a low-code or no-code tool we don't get credit for it. There was basically, I just saw a website builder report and I was like, Shopify is 50%. I was like, what? And then I looked and they weren't counting WordPress as a website builder.[00:55:15] And I was like, Oh, okay. [00:55:18] Medeiros: [00:55:18] This is where your angry tweet comes in. Why did you do this?[00:55:21] Mullenweg: [00:55:21] okay. They have a very specific reason where it basically like, as Gutenberg gets further on, I think they'll count us as a website builder. So the methodology was consistent if even if I didn't agree with it. And it is true that Shopify is really the only other platform other than WordPress that's growing in a meaningful way.[00:55:40] So I think it was interesting to look at,[00:55:41] Medeiros: [00:55:41] Yeah.[00:55:43] Mullenweg: [00:55:43] go ahead.[00:55:44] Medeiros: [00:55:44] I was going to say to your note about like empowering, like feeling empowered through software the biggest. Revelation to me as a quote, unquote developer many years ago was Drupal version four with the combination of CCK and views. My mind [00:56:00] was blown. Like I could build a view of data without having to write a query and knowing, back then and how to write SQL and stuff like that.[00:56:09] And I was like, wow, this is magical. Those are moments that you feel powerful when you're able to do that kind of thing.[00:56:17] Mullenweg: [00:56:17] I think where there's a huge opportunity for word press community, including individual bloggers is an education and tutorials. So let's say that something, when you just listed the Webflow plus air table and come road. What's each one, each name you listed. There is a business with sometimes hundreds of employees.[00:56:36] That's making millions and millions, probably tens of millions of dollars. And so they invest a lot into essentially user education, tutorials conferences, things like that. We need to do a lot better job. At writing the walk-throughs did you ever see a video game walkthrough? It's like curious how to get through super Mario or something like that.[00:56:56] Like, all these things are possible with WordPress, but some of those [00:57:00] levels, the boss monster is really hard and people don't make it fast enough. So if there's a little bit of a tutorial or walkthrough, that's really valuable. And I think it's also important for these to come from folks without necessarily commercial interests.[00:57:13] There are a lot of. A lot of the tutorial, if you Google for a lot of things around WordPress, you end up on affiliate sites and people are just trying to sell you a particular thing. And, we need a lot more of that. Here's the best way to do it. Maybe it says you should buy something.[00:57:29]Maybe it doesn't, maybe there's a free alternative. And so I think that's a downside as well as almost every WordPress company has an affiliate program. Sometimes the sort of free and unbiased tutorials and things are. Are just shelling for one [00:57:43] Medeiros: [00:57:43] Let, let Let me step in as your PR coach, Matt. Nope. Let's avoid. That is a lot of people listening to this who are WordPress YouTubers myself included, but I don't use a lot of affiliate links. [00:57:52] Mullenweg: [00:57:52] I'm not saying there's anything wrong with affiliate links, but I think what's beautiful is you want to promote the best solution and you don't have the [00:58:00] integrity to say that maybe something's not paid. It might be the best solution for this particular thing.[00:58:05]Medeiros: [00:58:05] A hundred percent Matt Mullenweg. Thanks for taking some time out of your day to, to reach out and have this discussion. Obviously folks can find you everywhere. Twitter, your blog, M a T [00:58:17] Mullenweg: [00:58:17] made that TT. Yeah. Fotomat pho, T O M a T on Tumblr, Instagram and Twitter. I'll try. I'm trying. One of my resolutions is to fight less on Twitter. So I'm trying to [00:58:28] use that one a little less. I could do a lot more if I use Twitter less. So watch out 2021.[00:58:36] Medeiros: [00:58:36] Take to by someone everyone else. mattreport.com. mattreport.com/subscribe to join the mailing list. We'll see you in the next episode.[00:58:43] Mullenweg: [00:58:43] Hey Matt, thank you so much. I really appreciate this.[00:58:47] Medeiros: [00:58:47] I appreciate it as well. Matt. Thanks a lot. ★ Support this podcast ★

Since its beginning, WordPress has won the hearts and computers of millions. This week Paul and Gina are joined by WordPress creator Matthew Mullenweg as he talks about the expansion of WordPress and his love for open source. He shares controversial opinions on open source and explains why we’ll all be headed there in the future. Links:  Matthew Mullenweg Twitter  Automattic  WooCommerce  Simplenote  Yoast  Chromium  Gutenberg 

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Well, hello, beautiful people, beautiful people, beautiful people. This is a Wednesday episode and you might be listening to a Wednesday or Thursday or Friday or Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. I said that all, I got to come up with a better way to summarize that, but this is a winning Wednesday. And today, as I said in the intro, we're going to be talking about Soft tools, software tools, software, but before we get there, I want you to know that I am extremely happy and I have a story to tell, and this same story applies to software and tools and our business.So I'm putting this into the world right now. Publicly, probably for the first time, but my family and I currently live in California and we are moving to Montana. So we are moving to Montana. I couldn't be more excited. I was never a California boy. I grew up on the East coast. I grew up in new England. I grew up with four seasons. My wife grew up in California. My daughter does, but they both want four seasons. We want more weather personally. I want more nature in my life. I want less distraction, less noise, less everything. I want simplicity. I want lakes. I want mountains. I want cold weather. I don't want to have to build an ice bath in my garage to get cold. And so I'm excited. But something really interesting happened. My family just got back from Montana. My wife and daughter were there for six days road tripping and looking at all the areas and cities. And they came back inspired and I mean, inspired and I have a hoarding. I have a hoarding inclination. We'll call it sometimes all the way from my childhood, but everything like I'll hoard extra camera equipment for the business. I'll hoard extra software for the business. I'll keep services that I pay for that I "might use". I'll keep that thing that I might use someday, or that I've never touched or never been opened, but I might need it that day.I'll keep clothes that I might want to wear again or shoes that are broken but, or old, it's like, I have a new pair, but like, those ones are so comfortable. And I, I realized this about myself. I realized this about myself. And so my family came back from Montana, my wife and my daughter, and my son out here. And we went on spring cleaning and I mean, spring cleaning, we are all cleaning clothes and cleaning out the house and cleaning out the garage and we're like, do we need it? No, it's like, do we want it? Yes. Is it going to cost more to move it than this to get a new one? Yes. Would it be better to start fresh? Yes. And so we've been going crazy, crazy cleaning. And then it brought up this beautiful thought of me when I came down and sat at my desk this morning to get to work. And it was like, where else do I hoard things in the business? Where else do I complicate processes that I might need or I might use instead of just really cleaning them up?And so today's podcast is about software and the software that I use in my business. And there's some really important things to understand with software or tools in the business and what I have found. It's just like social media is this giant distraction. This giant distraction of like, give me your attention, go here, go here, go here, go here at the entrepreneurial world is no different. There are an umpteen amount of tools to choose from, and there's always new ones coming in to try to convince you why they're better and convince you why you should go and convince you why you should leave. Convince you why they should do yours, convince you that they'll move you over for you. But I think what's really, really, really, really important to understand at the end of the day, is that tools do not do the job for you. They allow you the ability to use them to accomplish a goal. And you can't use two hammers at one time. You can't use two hammers at one time, I literally pulled this up and I found tool quotes because it's so imperative that we understand there's one that says it's essential to have good tools, but it is also essential that the tool should be used in the right way.A good tool improves the way you work. A great tool improves the way that you think, you cannot mandate productivity, must provide the tools to let people become their best. And so when we think about this. When we think about this, we really have to understand first why we're using the tool. What we're going to be utilizing the tool for, and then how to properly utilize it, to get the most out of it. And the reason I say that is because I could throw a carpenter, a Phillips head screwdriver, and I could tell them to build a room and they could. It would take a lot of time and let's assume all the Woodward's pre-cut and they just had, you know, screws. It would take a long time. I could also have that same carpenter, a power drill or a screw gun and give him the screws. He could do it a lot faster. They both accomplish the same one, the same goal, but you have to understand the constraints and the container and why we're doing what we're doing.And so this is a full disclosure. I have continued to pay for software or services in the business that I "might use" as a way to actually prevent myself from using them. I'm gonna say that again, I have paid for softwares or services in the business or hoarded these tools. As a way of convincing myself that if I continue to pay for them, that I might make it a priority and I might use it. Well, all I'm really doing is costing myself money and being inefficient because I'm just putting it out there and putting it out there and putting it out there.And so one of the things that we're doing and we continue to do is ask ourselves, do we need this? Does this help us? Accomplish the goal in an easier manner. Is this the most effective tool for the job? Is this the best way to get it done? Does this hit all the wickets? And I am not romantic about the tools that we use, but I make sure that I don't make any, any squirrel decisions of like, Oh, there's a new one. Oh, there's a better one. Oh, there's a shiny one because all too often. And I mean, all too often in business, in my business in particularly I have jumped ship thinking the grass was greener on the other side, only to realize that the software I was currently using did what I needed. I just didn't see it because I was biased.I was blindly biased that something new and something shiny and something over there was going to help me get there sooner. But at the end of the day, like in our business, our job is to be in deep relationships with our customers. Our job is to create content that helps you ethically build and scale your business. Our job is to have touch points that always make sure you feel safe and that you matter. And so right off the bat, I have Bonjoro and Bonjoro is number one on my list for the software that I use in my business.  Bonjoro is an app that allows me to set up automations that every time you come into my world, whether you give me your email, whether you buy a product, whether you opt in for something, whether you complete a part of a course, basically anything that I can trigger with Zapier or anything else, it will give me a to-do item to send you a video and I will know what you did. And then I will open my phone and it'll say, Send Tyler, a video sent Jay a video and it'll say, send them a video for buying the course, send them a video for opting in, send them a video for leaving a podcast review. And so then I open my phone. I record a video and I'm like, Jay, thank you so much for reviewing the podcast. I love you or Tyler thank you so much for buying the course. I am super honored to have you. I want you to know that you're safe. I want you to know the commitment from me and my team to you. And I want you to know that everything is easy. There's an email in your inbox or this subject line, right?And so Bonjoro is a tool that allows me to send a personalized video message to you or to anybody else under any circumstances that I deemed necessary. And so one of those as new clients, new purchasers, new mastermind members, all of the things that I can track and automate. Obviously I would need your email for this to happen or a purchase. I can't just do this because you hit my website yet. And so that's why we use this tool and it fits into our bucket of like, let's keep this simple. We want to connect with our customers. I can't go manually emailing a video to each one of them, adding them on Facebook to send a video of this. Automates the process for me that makes it easy. And then as you scale with Bonjoro as you scale with Bonjoro you can also have prerecorded messages and that's completely fine too, when you can send up to 50 at a time.And so when I work with supplement companies or physical product companies, we know that when you order something, you'll get a receipt and then you'll get a shipping notification delivery notification. And so we'll prerecord amazing messages from the founder that says, Hey, I am super honored to have you. Your receipt is in your inbox. We're going to get to work on. Assessing your order. Welcome to the family. Let us know how we can support you. And then we'll record another video so that when they get a risk, a shipping notification, that it would send another video. Like, Hey, it's George. I just want to let you know that we just drop your bag off at the post office or UPS. Just picked it up and it's on route. There's an email in your inbox for the tracking information. Let us know what you have. And then sometimes we'll have a delivery one like, Hey, go to your door. Sometimes the ups drivers have been known to steal the packages because the product is so good, but it just said it was delivered. And we want to make sure you get it. And so we don't pretend to personalize them. We just tell them we're sending them a video and this is why. And so Bonjoro is an amazing tool that we use, but it's one of those tools that helps us be in a deeper relationship and a more connected relationship with our customers and allows us to use it.And with that, I have a quick story because since I've been using Bonjoro a few other platforms have come on the market. A few of them have come on the market I've been using Bonjoro for three years and I love it. Cause I know it and it's easy. Sometimes could there be improvement sometimes, but does it help me accomplish the core mission and do we all know how to use it? Yes.And so then these new ones came on. I'm like, Oh, they have all these features and all these features. And I was like, we need this and we need that. And we need this. And I spent a month going over these features signing up for trials and I could never get it fully set up and operational to where Bonjoro was so was just a distraction now, will I eventually move? Sure. Maybe, but it has to make sure that it allows us to do what we do with at least as minimal friction as possible. And so Bonjoro is my number one tool. So for those of you wondering, I'm going to make this easy for you. All the software we recommend is at www.Mindofgeorge.com/software. So www.mindofgeorge.com/software. And Bonjoro is my number one for relationships and touchpoints and community building.And so I'm going to go through the other four right now for how we use them. And there are more, but I wanted the beginning of this episode to be really about us asking ourselves the question. Do we need this tool? Is this tool the most effective tool that we have? Does this help us? Be as efficient as possible help our team be as efficient as possible, or is this one of those? The grass is greener on the other side, I think a tool is going to solve a problem that I have to solve. And the one thing I want you to remember through all of this is that you still have to use the tool. The tool does not solve anything for you. Now you, the tool might automate a ton of stuff that then allows you to complete the last step. Right? And so when we think about automations, automations and efficiencies are designed to automate the things that over human is not required to do so that you can be a human where you're required to do it. And that's how it look at tools. So number one is bone Bonjoro.Now, when we get to number two, number two is a website. Now, when I think about website, I think about a lot of things you'll see, are everything from funnels to Kajabi. Which to memberpress for WordPress to click funnels, to thrivecart, to Kartra to all these landing page builders, to Wix, to Squarespace, to Shopify, to all of these things. And so to decide where you spend your time, the first thing you have to ask yourself is what do I need to accomplish? What do I need to accomplish? And so for us, it's like, what do we need? Well, we need a website for a podcast. We need a place for our blog posts and our content. We definitely need sales funnels. We're going to have to use those. We're going to need a membership platform. We're going to have to use those. And I was like, so what's the best way to get this done. And we've used all of the tools and I mean, all of them. And so for me, what what's really important is longevity. I really believe in owning my audience and owning my traffic and owning my data.I don't want some company to own my stuff. I don't want some company to be responsible for how fast my website is or if it works or not, or if their stuff goes down or not. And so I've used every sales funnel, software, everything that's out there. And my preference hands down is Drop funnels. My buddy found it. My buddy Jordan found a drop funnels and drop funnels is basically a funnel builder on top of WordPress. And as you know, WordPress has been around forever. Mullenweg founder of WordPress. It is the best for SEO. We've been blogging on it for years. You have full customization, you own everything. You get to make it work. And it's just as easy as any of these other platforms, but they try to sell you convenience at the sacrifice of your ability to build your own identity and own your own stuff. And so we use drop funnels. It allows us to build landing pages, sales pages, collect payment, and has its own cart function. It has all of these things. And when we started using it, we weren't using all of those features. We realized that this had the ability to be everything that we needed, but we wanted the website function first. And so we moved the website to it. We built up MindofGeorge on it, right? Like the software www.mindofgeorge.com/software that I mentioned,see all of this. And then we were like, yeah, this can do this. So then we started moving our sales funnels from Kajabi into drop funnels and our landing pages from Insta page into drop funnels and getting the team really bought in. And so what we decided is we looked at the long game and we're like, this is the thing that's going to get us all the way there. And we're not getting off of it. We are keeping it, we are using it. So let's figure a way to it. Iterate this in and phase this in. And so we started using drop funnels.And so now every time we build something new, we build it in drop funnels, and then we prioritize moving other stuff that may still be out there into drop funnels from the platforms they're on. And drop funnels. For me was one of the easiest decisions ever. I've been using WordPress forever. I'm familiar. My team's familiar. I want good SEO. I want to be able to control my website. Plus I want to make beautiful funnels and minutes and ease. And have fast, load times. And I mean, super fast load times, like 1/20 of other softwares and services that are out there because on WordPress, you, wherever you pay for your hosting, you own your server. Whether you're paying, you know, 20 bucks a month, you're on a shared server or you get a lot of traffic, you can up it. But when you're on a company like a SAS platform, you're competing with everybody else. And I've seen people's homepages built on these :landing page builders" loading in 30 seconds, 40 seconds, which will destroy your business.So for our website, We use drop funnels. So my number one relationship tool, is Bonjro. My number one, home building tool is Dropfunnels. And then my number one communication tool, which is email is convertkit. And just for everybody to understand, I have used every single email platform in the world.I have used drip, retentionscience, Klaviyo, Conver kit, MailChimp. Aweber. What else? I've used Kajabi. I've used Actionetics inside of ClickFunnels.I have used just Sendgrid. I have used there's another one I use that was redonkulous the price. It was like $4,000 a month, but I can't remember that one. So there's no point in having that one. I've used all of them. And at the end of the day, the questions I ask myself is what is the easiest way to deliver the message I need to deliver to my audience at scale. That's what email is for. And I was like, so what's the best platform that allows me to do it with no crazy setup and no crazy clunk, but having the ability to do automations and automate all of it while having the best deliverability rates in the game and Convertkit. And I know the founder, Nathan, I've known him since day one. I was one of the first 100 people on Convertkit and I've used it in conjunction with other platforms. And I always end up back on ConvertKit. Every single time. Their deliverability is through the roof. Their functionality is through the roof. Their support system is through the roof. It is the one platform that I've been able to build every single automation that I teach every single one, automating 99.9% of your email, except the one broadcast that you want to send because you're bored. I've been able to do all of that inside of Convertkit, from visual automations to rules, to sequences, to condition-based logic, to even having one email go out to a thousand people and each person shown a different email based on their information. All with ease, no crazy coding, no crazy. Anything and hand over hand. No one and not one other platform has ever beaten them in deliverability for me in reputation, deliverability, Nathan prides himself on it. His whole job. And he says it quite frankly is my only job is to be the best CRM on the planet to be the best email on the planet, not to be the best everything, but to be the best email.So my stack is my website is built on DropFunnels. My communication tool and relationship tool is Bonjoro. And then my email is on Convertkit, which allows me to deliver all of these experiences.And so our end goal is that we have just that that's it. That's all we're going to have. Is those three things. And even our membership stuff is getting moved into Dropfunnels and it will take time, but it's one of those things that I want to be an Olympian. And so I'm going to practice every day to be able to compete at the Olympics. These are the tools that I realize can take me where I want to go. And so I'm going to start using them every single day. As I clean up my toolbox, like I've been cleaning up my house for the last couple of days to create space and create simplicity because at the end of the day, the tools job is to allow things to function seamlessly with simplicity and no stress. To allow us to do what we do, which is to serve our clients, to sell our products and deliver on those services and products to achieve the best result for them and for us. And so if we're spending our time in tools and broken tack and jumping ship all the time. None of it's going to work. And so we have to pick one, be consistent and go.And so the last two tools I have, I'm going to bunch together because they're really important. So as you guys know, this is our podcast.We are over a hundred episodes in now in a couple of months, we launched it on a whim. And so these two tools are how I do everything in the podcast, everything. And so it is how I record at it and then publish the podcast and then where I host the podcast. So Descript, D E S C R I P T. Descript is what we use for the podcast. We can record on it. It automatically transcribes for us. It produces audio grams of our content for us, it allows us to edit it there, no matter where we are in the world, we're all editing the same file. And it even has crazy built-in artificial intelligence tools, which if I'm talking in this podcast and I say something wrong, I can go into it, delete the words on my keyboard. It will delete the audio and then I can type words and it will use AI to make my voice match it. Or as people remove like ums and AHS, which we don't, but I could go into the description and, and search for them and hit delete, and it will delete like audio Uhm from the entire episode. And so Descript is how we do it. It's our repository. So it's where all of our episodes live. It's where we add our intro and our outro and all of it. And they are an amazing company that we found last year that has been absolutely phenomenal and helping us.And then the second tool for the podcast is called Simplecast and Simplecast is where we host our podcast and then publish it there.And so Simplecast is what we found. We love it,it allows us to do a lot of things, like create our own recast. You listened to this podcast, you can go pick a part that you like selected and make a video recast of it. And so those are the two tools that we use for the podcast. So Descript is where we record it, edit it and all of it. And with theDescript, you can record outside of it. Like if you record video, you can literally upload the video into descript, strip the audio and do all of that. And then Simplecast is where we host it. And that's where we host it and then it's published and that's what we embed into our website and our blog and all of those beautiful things. But what I also love about Simplecast is they basically give you your own website as well. So you don't actually need a website if you're just getting started.So these are the pieces of software and tools that we primarily use in the business over everything else. And of course there's like communication tools for the team project management tools. But like, this is the stuff like the engine of the business. Like this is the core of all of it. And these are the ones that I recommend. So number one is Bonjoro . Number two is Dropfunnels. Number three is convertkit number four and five are Simplecast and the Descript for the podcast.And so what we did is we put all these together on one page for you. It's at www.mindofgeorge.com/software.. So www.mindofgeorge.com/software to go check them out. Link anymore. And I'll be actually having the founders of these companies on the podcast, because I know all of them to talk through them, get their case studies because there is an expansive amount you can do with them.And so my challenge for you is to pick a tool and use it and keep using it. Because if you have the right one and you think about the game and the game that you want to play, the tool that you have is probably one of the best ones and the grass is not always greener on the other side, when it comes to tools and software.So I'm gonna wrap here, have an absolutely beautiful day. I'm going to go drink my coffee and envisioned my move to Montana, which makes me so happy. I will see you guys in the next episode. Remember relationships, always beat algorithms

La storia di WordPress il software per creare siti web più popolare al mondo.

With Special Guest Panelist Kim Shivler #1 - The REWORK podcast Discussion Between Matt Mullenweg and David Hansson one of the founders BaseCamp and Ruby on Rails https://rework.fm/open-source-and-power-with-matt-mullenweg/ Matt Medeiros is interviewed by Brian Krogsgard of the Post Status Fear and uncertainty for WordPress, with Matt Medeiros https://poststatus.com/fear-and-uncertainty-for-wordpress-with-matt-medeiros/   #2 - All Hands On Desk https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/1/20756701/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-leak-audio-ftc-antitrust-elizabeth-warren-tiktok-comments #3 - Brian Gardner Steps Down From StudioPress https://wptavern.com/brian-gardner-steps-down-from-studiopress #4 -Inside Uber’s plan to take over city life with CEO Dara Khosrowshahi Morten Rand-Hendriksen pinkandyellow.com John Locke lockedowndesign.com Sallie Goetsch wpfangirl.com Chris Badgett lifterlms.com Spencer Forman wplaunchify.com Matt Medeiros matt-report.com Adrian groundhogg.co jonathan wp-tonic.com Joe Casabona casabona.org  

Major American telecommunications company Verizon is selling its subsidiary Tumblr. The social networking and microblogging site, which can be used for posting short blogs, photos, and GIFs, is being sold to Automattic, Inc., the owner of major blogging site WordPress. Aside from the acquisition of the website, the deal also entails bringing 200 Tumblr staff into Automattic's workforce. Some sources report that Automattic is acquiring Tumblr for around $3 million, which is a great downgrade from its original value. The company was bought by Verizon at $1.1 billion in 2013. However, Verizon said that selling the social networking site at such a low price is not an issue for the company. Before the deal was struck, Verizon had been looking to sell the site for some time because of Tumblr's inability to generate enough profit. The site's users declined dramatically after Verizon made changes in Tumblr's policies on the screening of content for the site. According to a report, the site was visited 521 million times in 2018, but the latest data shows that Tumblr only got 381 million visits as of July this year. Following Tumblr's change in ownership, some people wonder about the future of the website and its avid users. However, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg is positive about the acquisition. He promised that Automattic will help preserve Tumblr's passion and sense of community, which made users worldwide love the site. Mullenweg also said that the company aims to make Tumblr work alongside Wordpress to provide people a more inclusive and enjoyable experience online.

In der dritten Ausgabe unseres Open-Web-Podcasts sprechen Matthias Pfefferle und Marcel Weiß über Github Sponsors, eine Art Patreon für Open-Source-Entwickler, und was die Übernahme von Tumblr durch die WordPress-Mutter Auttomatic für das Open Web bedeuten kann. Außerdem: Mastodon wechselt zu ActivityPub und ID4me. (Datei) Links zu den Themen: Github Sponsors WordPress follow-up: WP kauft Tumblr; Mullenweg...

In der dritten Ausgabe unseres Open-Web-Podcasts sprechen Matthias Pfefferle und Marcel Weiß über Github Sponsors, eine Art Patreon für Open-Source-Entwickler, und was die Übernahme von Tumblr durch die WordPress-Mutter Auttomatic für das Open Web bedeuten kann. Außerdem: Mastodon wechselt zu ActivityPub und ID4me. (Datei) Links zu den Themen: Github Sponsors WordPress follow-up: WP kauft Tumblr; Mullenweg...

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, August 12, 2019 that Verizon is selling social media and blogging platform Tumblr to Automattic for an undisclosed sum, though rumors state that it may be as low as $3 million dollars. After the announcement, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg discussed the news on PostStatus, stating that they plan to migrate infrastructure off of Verizon, move Tumblr's backend to WordPress, and support the same APIs on both WP.com and Tumblr. Mullenweg noted on PostStatus that this acquisition is "by far the largest investment or acquisition Automattic has ever made." In this episode, we discuss the implications for Tumblr, WordPress, and Automattic.

Sans le savoir, vous consultez tous les jours des sites construits avec WordPress, le logiciel libre mis au point par ce Texan. Un petit génie discret, bien caché derrière son code.Un portrait signé Fred Haffner

Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about how the blogging platform has evolved in the 13 years since it launched, powering a huge number of websites that included AllThingsD and an earlier version of Recode.net. Mullenweg also talks about WordPress' recent acquisition of a mobile journalism startup, the Atavist; how he manages 750 employees without an official corporate office; and why "every tech company should have an editorial team." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Matt Mullenweg is an American online social media entrepreneur and founder of WordPress. He also founded Automattic and currently serving as CEO.

Most Why Not Now? guests practice gratitude and giving in both their business and personal lives. They don’t necessarily intentionally set out to do this, they just do. It’s a part of how they operate through life. In this episode I’ve pulled together a few snackable soundbites of people who offer a unique point of view on gratitude and giving. Additionally, I interview my Mom in this episode!   We start off with Adam Grant. He’s an organizational psychologist, New York Times best-selling author and the highest rated professor at Wharton. Often times we think of “giving back' as a legacy after we’ve achieved a certain level of success and expertise. Adam shares a new, more progressive, way to look at giving back. If you want to hear the entire interview with Adam you can go here or find Episode 22 on iTunes.   Next up is Matt Mullenweg. He’s the founder and CEO of Automatic which is the parent company of Wordpress which powers 28% of the internet. Matt is one of my favorite people to learn from. Matt talks about how gratitude for everything from small to big things can be a strategy for letting go. If you want to hear the entire interview with Matt you can go here or find Episode 37 on iTunes.   Next we hear from Amy Purdy, a Paralympian snowboard champion who Oprah calls a hero. At age 19, she was given a 2% chance to live after being diagnosed with meningitis. She has gone on to defy all the odds and in this clip she talks about a recent threat to her health once again and how she uses gratitude as a strategy. If you want to hear the entire interview with Amy you can go here or find Episode 36 on iTunes.   And last but not least, I have a very special guest on the show. My mom! She’s been working up her courage to come on the show and I’m excited to share. RuthAnn Jensen is an entrepreneur who lives in the Black Hills of South Dakota. She’s the co-founder of Copper Canyon Lodge, a wedding venue and lodging business, and she shares what it was like to start her first company in her 50’s. She’s one of my favorite people on the planet and I’m beyond grateful for her. Follow RuthAnn Jensen's Copper Canyon Lodge on Facebook, Instagram and her company's website.

I'm not foolish enough to think that the entirety of WordPress' growth is driven by our love for the software, but that we consultants are responsible for a sizeable portion of it. A portion that shouldn't be ignored and one that should be welcome to the discussion more often. Under-represented. Perhaps. You can listen to the audio version Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners The blue-collar WordPress worker and the 2,500+ websites built to grow the CMS Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 00:14:17 Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:14:17 I know many of you are like me, we don't run 100+ person agencies, we don't have 1mil+ plugin downloads, and we haven't been contributing code to core for the last decade. However, what we do share in common is a life of servicing customers in the online business space. Servicing customers or our local community by way of building websites — helping organizations amplify their message. This act of service is deeply rooted in using our favorite tool, WordPress. Sure, we're talking less and less about the tech side of things lately, but we know that it delivers a massive advantage as a platform to our customers. An advantage that might not matter to them in the short-term, but in the long-term sustainability of their business. While many might join the ranks of offering WordPress services simply for the fact that it represents a big market to cash in on — and we all know that person — I believe many of us are in it for the right reasons: Promote the use of open source software. Give our customers a chance to own a sliver of their online presence and/or data. Provide a flexible & sustainable platform for future opportunity. Earn an honest living through service. It's at this point where I begin to disagree with a part of Matt Mullenweg's theory of WordPress' growth. Granted, he has a WAY better vantage point from atop a tower of data that I (we) don't have access to. I'm relying on my own gut instinct, naivety, and feedback from my audience to deliver this message — take it for what it's worth. Tweet from @photomatt Who is responsible for all of this WordPress? A business can't survive without strong sales & customer service, two competencies that are arguably the lifeblood of a company. Many of you reading this fill that exact gap for the open source WordPress project. I don't mean this as a slight to the thousands of wonderful people that build the software, document it, and support it in the forums, but that consultants (doing it right or wrong) are also fueling this locomotive too. There are no official sales or customer service channels at WordPress.org and us consultants bear the brunt of it — for better or worse — and that's where our job comes in. Just as you trust a core contributor to spot-check her code and ensure that we've sanitized all the things! Consultants are the boots on the ground, and as you'll see below in my feedback section, represent a disproportionate ratio of launching many more websites than an individual website owner. Mullenweg alludes to the end-user (what I'm calling the solo site owner) as the driving force behind growth. He might (probably does, can we have it please?) have more data than me, but on the flip side, it might be a vanity metric. If you count all the 1-click installs on GoDaddy or .com installs, perhaps, but how many of them were influenced or eventually turned to a professional to take over the reigns? Just back-of-the-napkin math, a consultant might launch 50-to-1 websites in a year versus an individual blogger or business owner launching their first and only website. What happens when that number compounds over 5 years? On paper, I'm responsible for 500+ WordPress sites in the wild not counting the hundreds of other people online and in my local community I've influenced over the years. I'm sure you're in a similar boat as an individual or team that is responsible for the growing adoption of WordPress. Thank you for that. Thank you to everyone else that makes this project possible. 1-to-many vs. 1-to-1 Again, maybe I'm just naive but out of the 500 websites I've helped build in some way, roughly 70% of the list counted on me to sell them on the software and support it. I was sales + customer service for the open source CMS. I was the face of their decision and the person they relied on to get it all working. You too, I'm sure. I could have offered Drupal, Expression Engine, or Squarespace and my customers would have bought it regardless. Many of my WordPress peers are making that same adjustment today. Sure, I would still have to support it regardless, but those applications and parent companies have an easier story to tell. The waters aren't muddied. You pay for a product, you know the expectations. Matt, if you're reading, do you know how hard it is to explain to someone new in this space what the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org is? Add Jetpack, an Automattic company, to the mix and heads begin to explode. Especially when in-app ads cause uncertainty. When you compete with yourself Step outside of the WordPress bubble for a moment and imagine selling a product that competes with itself. Think of the confusion and apprehension a customer might feel when hearing that you have another paid alternative that's getting coined as an “easier all-in-one” alternative or “made by the team behind WordPress…dot com. I've actually been there before, selling Chevrolet's when customers would ask “What about GMCs?” Two of the EXACT same products, by the same company — different badges. We all know how that turned out, General Motors went bankrupt. Maybe not directly because of mixed-brand recognition, but certainly adding this line of confusion didn't help. They axed Pontiac and Oldsmobile because as a result — the least performant of the mix. Enter in: sales. That's where us consultants spend time selling. The story, the benefits, the future growth. Blue-collar WordPress workers need a seat at the table I consider myself a blue-collar digital worker. I'm pulling at the strands of “WordPress” as it begins to move away from me. Jetpack + .com + Gutenberg are reshaping the opportunity we once knew into something — else. A lot of what we do has already been commoditized in the last two years and it's only getting worse.  I'm a believer that once the market corrects, we will discover new inroads, but for now, we fight to find ways to earn. I don't know about you, but I'm rolling up my sleeves and getting my hands a lot dirtier navigating these uncharted seas. On one hand, everyone has a SaaS, a podcast, an info product, or an agency to service customers. On the other, Jetpack and .com set their sites directly on consultants & product creators to ramp up their own revenue efforts potentially squeezing us out of the middle-market. I'll let you formulate your own caricature of the upper-class vs. middle-class in this context. Don't lose sight of us When I first had Matt on the show, it was off of his remarks that Jetpack was responsible for a large portion of the growth of WordPress. A comment that was almost thrown out or lost in the shuffle. To that I say: What about the free/paid plugins? What about the free/paid themes? How have these helped boost the adoption of WordPress? See, even some many years ago, Matt knew where Jetpack was going as a monetization platform that we weren't aware of, yet. Now it's staring us down the barrel of its golden money gun. Jetpack was about to take on the feature set and revenue share of other plugins — big and small — in the market. And now, as I write this piece, I feel that the same squeeze play will begin with consultants. Not by taking away our livelihood, or that VIP will launch a services business, but that we're not being considered to shape the product as our clients use it. Why care? I am so very passionate about the guidance of WordPress because it represents free speech, the democratization of publishing, and the livelihood of so many hard-working people around the globe. see: heropress.com I respect the decisions being made from core & Auotmattic and expect the same in return that our collective voices are heard — regardless if we can contribute code or not. That not all of WordPress growth comes from a fancy feature or a new design language think tank, but from how real world people are using the software. I yearn for the ambitious days where WordPress wanted to be the operating system for the web and not settle as just a Wix competitor. I want to connect my refrigerator to a custom post type via the REST API — well — because I can. I celebrate everyone that contributes to WordPress' success from the smallest line of code to the sponsorship donations at WordCamps. You all have built something truly worthy of global recognition. If you've not yet contributed in your own way yet, I ask that you start however you see fit. A blog post, a YouTube video, or join over at make.wordpress.org. Either direction you take, it's important you make your voice and opinions heard.  Like Mullenweg said before me, I too believe that what got us here won't get us there — a better software for all. It's up to us to get involved While I feel that new mediums must be created for greater community feedback, we have some tools and places you can go to get involved. If you want to effect change, visit the following channels or conferences: Get involved here: https://make.wordpress.org/ The Make.WordPress Marketing group: https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/ The Make.WordPress Community https://make.wordpress.org/community/ WordCamp central https://central.wordcamp.org/ Learn more about starting your own meetup: https://make.wordpress.org/community/meetups/ Get more involved on Twitter! Join a WordPress professionals group like WP Elevation or Post Status Who's responsible for all the WordPress growth? The following list of quotes & feedback comes from a question I sent to my newsletter based on Scott Bollinger's post, Perspective on WordPress. Consider joining to stay connected. I'm incredibly proud of the feedback I received, not just because someone took the time to respond, but because of how diverse these answers are. I hope you all use this feedback from my valuable audience to understand how we all define the growth of WordPress. // I'm early on in my freelance career, but I do think we as WordPress Experts and consultants we are responsible for a large amount of WordPress's growth. It's one of the reasons I'm so passionate about holding on to my clients and always being on hand to support them to grow online, after the website is launched. No one wants to see abandoned WordPress sites sitting sad! — @deandevelops 5 WordPress websites // WordPress' growth as a platform is primarily the outcome of a large community of independent creators who want to publish multiple ideas without technical limitations – that's why WordPress is used and promoted by so many technophiles. — Brennan Bliss 40 – 60 WordPress websites // The WordPress Growth is facilitated through adoption. Adoption specifically by developers, integrators and service providers. It's also facilitated by time. At the time of WordPress' birth, there were few alternatives that did it as well as WordPress. That though was a double-edged sword, by identifying the need we established a new market. When I sit back and look, site builder platforms can be to WordPress, as WordPress was to Typepad and other solutions 10 years ago. They've gone one step further in the simplification process, and similar to WordPress, are building their network on adoption with developers and integrators. Interestingly enough, they don't require service providers. One of the very interesting things about WordPress was it's ability to build a new economy for developers / integrators. Very few other platforms were able to do the same. This new economy propelled the platform forward. Today however, new economies are being built on site builders – Shopify being the most prevalent. Five years ago, when talking to website owners WordPress would be common language, these days the conversation starts with website builders first, WordPress second or third. When asked why, the responses are almost always uniform – it's too much to deal with. So yes, there has been growth. That's undeniable. But there is also a slow down in it's adoption, and I'm not sure downloads numbers count as an accurate measurement to best represent adoption. I travel the world, speak to a great number of website owners and small business, and at an alarming rate I am seeing a shift in the conversation around the solutions they use. There was a time when I would spend time with the Joomla! community and I would ask them what they work on. Almost sheepishly they would always mutter, out of ear shot, they build WordPress sites on the side to keep the lights on. These days, much to my surprise, from WordPress dev's, I hear – I built and support [insert site build platform] on the side too. I find this to be a fascinating trend, and a strong indicator of what these platforms are contributing to the market. Our successes tomorrow won't be based on how amazing we were yesterday. Yesterday we fit a need, today that need is being satisfied by so many others. — Tony Perez a lot of WordPress websites // A big % of WordPress growth has been agencies/consultants pushing it. Clients want a site that's done and maintainable. They use whatever platform we say is best. — John Locke 65+ WordPress websites // I believe the growth in WordPress usage is because it is easy to learn, free to use, and the community support is amazing! — Jay Van Houtte 7 WordPress websites and counting. // I agree with Scotts wife it was super hard to figure out this platform. I build square and wix sites now and had to code my first ecommerce site back in 1998. Then I was off grid for about 7 years and came back to a whole new world. I spent endless hours working it and with chat help and I almost bailed. I only stay on for the social media aspect of it. I admin some facebook pages but am just me on my one wordpress site. — Gretchen Mauer No longer user WordPress // Open source FREE, plugin selection, popular Word camps and awesome developer community are the reason behind growth — Ronik Patel 120+ WordPress websites // WordPress is growing because of its enormous value to small businesses; it provides a great deal of autonomy and value to the end user. — Seth Shoultes 100+ WordPress websites 40,000 active plugin installs // WordPress' power is its flexibility. I can design whatever I want, and the client can easily update content. We both do what we do best. — Lisa Cerezo roughly ~150 WordPress websites // The growth of WP definitely comes from non-technical users. Developers are the foundation, but users are rockets! — Anh Tran 80 WordPress websites // WordPress has grown not because everyday users prefer it, but because the people *that they trust* prefer it. — Aaron Hockley 25+ WordPress websites // There are tons of free resources for learning more and a plugin to do just about anything, making it one of the most accessible yet flexible web building tools around. — Jackie Latham 50+ WordPress websites // I've probably influenced over 1000 people to become aware or use of WordPress – at least. From my perspective, one major factor for WordPress growth is the technical and creative industries advocating WordPress (agencies/designers/devs), and the community creating paid/free plugins pushing the limit of what WordPress can do and thus making it a perfect fit for so many needs. Extra comment: If the industry as a whole had seen a better CMS as an option in the past, WordPress would have faded to the background like all the others that didn't have a commercial industry sitting alongside it to drive it forward. Extra summary: It's grown through advocacy. — Paul Lacey 250+ WordPress websites // I would bet only a handful of my clients, in the history of my business, would have found WordPress on their own without me. The setup process for anything other than a basic blog is too much for average users in my experience. A lot of my clients are in an industry with high turnover and it's a constant struggle to onboard new employees on the inner workings of the WordPress admin. — Brian Link 15 WordPress websites // WP has grown because people view it as all free or they think they want/need more control. — Corey Maass 24+ WordPress websites // WP has grown quickly because of the helpful inclusive community, enthusiasm of builders and developers, ease-of-use, and the GPL. — Eric Amundson 500+ WordPress websites // I think WordPress grows in tune with the democratic back-bone of the internet. Sure we cane it for business, but ultimately wp represents the freedom to self-publish and the boundary-less opportunity of the net itself. — Woody Hayday 500+ WordPress websites // I attribute the growth of WordPress to the quality, simplicity, and extensibility of the product and the diverse and perpetually generous community supporting it. — Brian Dusablon 75+ WordPress websites // In the early days Matt had to differentiate and position WP as a non-technical platform during the days of strong Joomla and Drupal presence. Now with clear dominance in the CMS market and its size of not just users but of the support community, technical support community I might add, is the result of its learning curve. Because WP was never a WYSISWYG Squarespace experience. — Vadim Mialik 70+ WordPress websites // Besides all the great WordPress sites on the Web, there are also countless dead, half-finished or poor SEO link bait sites. — Lisa McMahon 200+ WordPress websites Thanks for reading and please consider joining the newsletter and subscribing to the podcast. ★ Support this podcast ★

More than 27% of the internet is powered by Matt Mullenweg's creation. Matt is the Founder and CEO of Automatic, the parent company of Wordpress. At age 33, he's a tech powerhouse yet he remains humble and willing to share his learnings along his journey. In this episode Matt shares takeaways from growing his company, tips on when to consider raising money and the filters questions he uses when making various business decisions. Matt shares a Why Not Now? moment that became a defining point in the growth of his company. What questions to ask yourself if you're considering fundraising for your company and taking on investors. How Matt chooses his business partners. Matt shares something he does in effort to lead a more efficient and effective day. How Matt keeps his mind healthy. What is Matt reading? What keeps Matt up at night? Pirates or Ninjas, who’s tougher in Matt's opinion? What advice Matt would give to his younger self. Books & Reference Links: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr Ikigai by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy Follow Matt on Twitter & Instagram

Audio only The Random Show Threesome — Tim Ferriss, Kevin Rose, and Matt Mullenweg

The Random Show Threesome — Tim Ferriss, Kevin Rose, and Matt Mullenweg

Season 3 of OfficeHours.FM is here! My panel of guests includes Rebecca Gill, Diane Kinney, and Matt Medeiros. Sometimes irreverent, sometimes serious, we cover the WIX GPL debate, subscription-based business models, and the impact of the REST API on businesses.

Mullenweg discusses domain names and .blog. Matt Mullenweg created WordPress and is the CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and many related products. On today’s show, Matt will discuss the upcoming launch of the .blog top level domain and how you can get in the door early. I also asked Matt if the importance […] Post link: WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg talks domain names – DNW Podcast #91 © DomainNameWire.com 2020. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact editor (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

Today, I'm excited to finally have Matt Mullenweg join us on the Matt Report podcast. We're going to satisfy our typical entrepreneur appetite by diving into his day-to-day routine and we'll learn what it's like being the CEO of Automattic. Want to know where Mullenweg's vision for WordPress is going to take us? No problem, we've got you covered. For those of you interested in the nitty-gritty of the WordPress community, we'll discuss his take on .com vs .org and our latest debate — the purpose of the Jetpack plugin. My interview with Matt Mullenweg Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe on Soundcloud The WordPress Entrepreneur Booking Matt on the show was a result from one of my more spirited comments over on WP Tavern's piece, How important is Jetpack on WordPress' road to 50% market share? I've told you how to make it in WordPress and achieving Greatness here isn't easy. My thoughts expressed in this discussion with Mullenweg are a culmination of my experiences in the WordPress marketplace over the last few years. We all walk a different path in our professional journey and that's what creates our unique finger print or identity. My intentions in this episode are that of someone who continues to work hard to build a brand and attractive product offering for my customers. Though I love WordPress and it's community, top-down decisions can be a bit scary for a bootstrapped business person like me and I suspect, some of you as well. Remember, I grew up under the boot of General Motors. Can you afford to give back? Five for the future was one such topic that left me thinking like I was pulled from the game too early. Freelancers, consultants and boutique agencies are sure to feel the pressure of dedicating 5% when they are still very much feeling the growing pains of organic growth. Will Mullenweg's response surprise you? You will have to listen in. ★ Support this podcast ★

Today, I’m excited to finally have Matt Mullenweg join us on the Matt Report podcast. We’re going to satisfy our typical entrepreneur appetite by diving into his day-to-day routine and we’ll learn what it’s like being the CEO of Automattic. Want to know where Mullenweg’s vision for WordPress is going to take us? No problem, we’ve got you covered. For those of you interested in the nitty-gritty of the WordPress community, we’ll discuss his take on .com vs .org and our latest debate — the purpose of the Jetpack plugin. (more…)

All the tech, social media and blog headlines that Bloggers love, need and use everyday. Today we spoke about Star Trek, Taco Bell, Snapchat, Bitcoin, Netflix, WhatsApp, Kate Kastner, Amazon, Matt Mullenweg and more.