Category Archives: Business

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I can’t stop thinking how easy it could potentially be to truly “disrupt” the airline industry. Judge Gomila looks at a number of aspects of flying that don’t make sense:

It would be silly if you had to recheck all safety tests with an independent agency before driving a car every single time. Having to watch the simple safety instructions every flight is a waste of time and energy for the passenger. No one even watches it anyway. We need to take this online and out of the cabin, making it a test that people hold a license for, rather like a driving license.

I know the aviation industry is something Horace Deidu has been thinking about recently, too. It encourages me to see smart folks talking about these things in addition to folks like BlackJet creating (admittedly, less accessible) stepping stones in the meantime.

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I liked this collection of thoughts and lessons from Julie Zhuo, a design director at Facebook, including:

Sweep up the crumbs. Wipe the tables. Turn off the lights. Plug the holes that need plugging—even if it’s menial, even if nobody will know you did it. Do it in service of the product, the company, and this wondrous, magical thing you are all building together.

It reminded me of this story from Adii Pienaar, founder at WooThemes:

As CEO, I don’t necessarily think that washing dishes is part of my “job description” and it doesn’t carry any obvious priority in terms of things I need to get done today … sometimes the best thing I can do in my business is the smallest, simplest thing; especially if that means I can remove obstacles for my team.

(these were published at medium and svbtle, respectively)

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I’m quite happy to hear that the folks behind Simplenote will be joining the team at Automattic as I know it means the native iOS mobile blogging experience for WordPress users will improve1.

I’ve found the official WordPress iOS app to be unusable or very buggy for most of its lifetime (posts appear ‘drafted’ when published and can be accidentally published multiple times, integrations with WP.com Stats not working with multiple JetPack sites on one account, push notifications not ‘clearing’ correctly).

Back to my thoughts on WordPress as a “product or platform”: it seems that the folks at Automattic are de-facto maintainers and sole contributors to the iOS app. Perhaps maintaining Open Source iOS app projects is less attainable since its (currently) less accessible for folks to contribute to?

  1. Side note: I stop using SimpleNote long ago after a mis-sync on a new device (with no “notes”) unintentionally deleted all of my existing notes on the server. ↩

Citing authors on the web (and off)

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Over a year ago, John Gruber rightfully gave AllThingsD (from the Wall Street Journal) a hard time about properly attributing sources. For the longest time ATD would not use hyperlinks to point to original sources nor even the websites of companies or products mentioned in their articles.

Yet, even when an article was updated to point to an original source, AllThingsD did not cite the author by name (just the publication name). It seemed half-hearted, especially from a publication that so prominently features its principals: Kara Swisher, John Paczkowski, and of course, Walt Mossberg.

These days, the individuals behind an article are just as, if not more, important than the publication they come from. Micah Baldwin summarized this best last night:

I am starting to realize that I dont care about publications (magazines/newspapers, etc). I am now valuing specific writers or topics. (ex. apple biz posts by MG Siegler or writing posts by Ben Casnocha)

I’ve felt the same for a while and realize that my allegiance is to the writers: I’ve followed MG Siegler from VentureBeat to TechCrunch to his own blog. I enjoyed reading Mat Honan on The Awl and even more at WIRED. Brad Feld writes on his personal blog but also publishes on a Wall Street Journal blog.

The importance of knowing and appreciating the “who” behind an article goes back to the (over-simplified) point that companies are simply made up of people. Yes, the New York Times and WIRED are distinct publications, but I could easily see myself reading a great article from Nick Bilton in both.

Related side note: it was strange to me that so much attention was lent to the WSJ story a week ago about iPhone 5 demand being “down”. And the one about the “cheaper iPhone” coming soon (again!) the week before that. The WSJ has been mostly reputable when publishing stories about Apple, but most of the predictive headlines from Asawa and Lessin have gone unsubstantiated. Know who you’re reading…

(I originally drafted this post on July 2, 2011)

Is WordPress a development platform or a product?

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I’m not sure if I’m thinking about the WordPress Open Source project and its “competition” the right way…

Two years ago, Alex wrote some thoughts about how we discuss WordPress as both a product and a platform with potential clients:

Some people view WordPress as a CMS platform to build on. They want us to help them create a website, service, etc. and they see WordPress as a platform that their idea can be built on […] On the other side of the spectrum are people who come to us viewing WordPress (and the thousands of plugins that themes that are available for it) as a product. These folks typically are looking to create a website with a certain feature set and may already have in mind a collection of existing plugins that they think may be useful for creating these features.

As you’re likely aware, the lines are blurry between WordPress being a “product” and a “platform” because WordPress means a lot of things to a lot of people now (even more so than two years ago when Alex wrote that article): WordPress.com is a different experience than downloading the Open Source package. WordPress that your roommate uses to blog about traveling abroad is probably set up very differently from WordPress that large publishers have customized for their daily use. Some sites use WordPress with no customizations and are very popular whereas some WordPress sites use many plugins and features and are quantifiably unpopular. Some companies run WordPress on their own web hosting servers whereas some folks may log in to WordPress installed on someone else’s servers. Some folks want to enable features and expect everything to work “off the shelf” while others anticipate needing resources to get their exact configuration in place. Some folks build businesses and platforms and products on top of WordPress, while others expect it to work as it says on the label. Sophisticated APIs can be created with WordPress, while beautiful photography portfolios can, too.

This means WordPress is up against a lot of competitors: paid services like Squarespace, free services like Blogger, other Open Source content management systems like Drupal, web development frameworks like Ruby on Rails, social networks like Facebook, etc.

I think this all leads to my point: making decisions for a “platform” can be much harder and much more different than a “product”. Does the WordPress Open Source project have “split personality” disorder based on its blogging (product) origins? Has it grown to warrant the kind of management and architecture decision making like a Ruby on Rails (platform)? Is it possible to exist both as a content management development framework and a publishing product?

That question is probably too hard to answer today.. maybe instead the point I was getting at previously is this: I think it’s worth defining “the competition” at the Open Source project level (are they products, services, or other platforms?) so that future design goals and decisions can be measured against it.

Without this kind of concrete direction, I feel that the project could experience severe cognitive dissonance and the product-platform chasm will only grow wider.

What competition is WordPress up against?

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From Steven Sinofsky, regarding his recent use of an iPhone1:

Obviously you should use a competitive product. You should know what you’re up against when a consumer (or business) ultimately faces a buying decision. They will weigh a wide array of factors and you should be aware of those not only for the purposes of sales and marketing but when you are designing your products.

I can think of at least two big competitors that the WordPress Open Source project will continue to face in the coming year (and beyond):

1. User-friendly publishing tools attracting casual and professional writers, photographers, etc.

Svbtle, Medium, and Branch are all aiming to increase the level of discourse and quality of content on the web … and they’re all new since 2012. Not to mention the existing social networks like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook which continue to gain more attention and raise the expectations on what “web” experiences should be like.

That said, WordPress has recently focused on features like “distraction free writing” and theme customization options. Will the ecosystem of plugins and themes remain best suited to compete against and solve the problems these newcomers bring? Recent discussion around the “Post Formats” user interface suggest so, but is that fast enough to compete?

2. Content management systems targeting different website verticals

While existing “content management systems” are certainly still worth considering, it seems market share is moving in favor of WordPress. With that shift, newcomers will spot the opportunities to fill voids and can more readily create robust, user-friendly, niche-targeted services and products such as the folks at Squarespace and Virb.

Those aside, there are plenty of sites in the Showcase that help show the robust, multidisciplinary nature of WordPress. Should the marketing and attraction of new users continue to be left to the fragmented group of startups, freelancers, consultancies, and agencies building sites, products, and services with WordPress? Certainly, that’s part of the joy of open source. But, is the “development platform” able to allow those folks to continue to be competitive?

I only mean to ask more questions than provide answers or ideas here. I’m not sure if I’m thinking about this the right way…

  1. a “big deal” as he previously led the Windows division at Microsoft ↩

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If you’ve not seen: Aereo is a new startup backed by Barry Diller to free the television airwaves and put them online. In short: they create a farm of television antennas, put them online, and then allow you to watch your broadcast television online.

It’s currently running in New York and has already met some legal challenges (incumbents certainly don’t like threats). Sign up online to get updates when it arrives in your city.

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I remember years ago when the Great Divide tasting room was a small, cozy spot where you could wander in and sample three excellent beers for free. When they expanded the room (took out an entire wall) and started charging $1 per sample I thought the two events were related. From PJ over at Denver off the Wagon:

In the middle of 2011, Great Divide realized they had an interesting problem. People had learned that small samples of the beer were free, and on a Friday night would pour into the taproom, slam a flight of high octane brew, and wander off to other locations of lesser repute. Call them frugal or hyenas, these were not the patrons the brewery hoped would fill their bar stools on a Friday evening. But what could a fledgling, 17 year old brewery do? To charge for samples would be disingenuous to their fans, friends, and future followers. To keep them free would be to attract these hooligans of the night.

This is a great example of how putting up the right “barriers” can help improve your business (plus more excellent local writing from the folks over at DOTW).

What have we learned from CES so far?

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I think the list is short but these shouldn’t be surprises, right?

  1. A chipmaker — always at least one degree removed from consumers — is out of touch with what gets consumers excited about electronics… at the Consumer Electronics Show.

  2. 3D television is dead to consumers … because it was only pushed by manufacturers and studios to sell more electronics and movies?

Serious question: what comes out of CES anymore?

Stay tuned for my snarky coverage of SXSW…

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From Lindsey Dulin at Denver off the Wagon regarding “more distribution channels make it easier for new businesses to enter the craft beer industry”:

Once consumers spend their beer bucks at the supermarkets, mom-and-pop liquor stores will begin to vanish. According to the Denver Business Journal, a study conducted by Summit Economics, LLC declares that nearly half of Colorado liquor stores will close their doors within three years.

An interesting read based on the political and business landscape here in Colorado on the subject. Even more interesting, of course, is the conversation in the comments.

Having watched Beer Wars it makes me wonder if a good way to tackle the “crafty” brews (think Budweiser putting out a “seasonal” beer versus true “craft” brewers) is to give better ‘gateway’ beers to the general populace.