Category Archives: Internet

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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. ↩

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.

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I’ve become a big fan of the Circa News app from Matt Galligan, Ben Huh, and company. With the new “swipe to go back” gesture in version 1.1 this has become one of my favorite apps on my iPhone’s home screen.

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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Don’t worry, Instagram users: I just read Flickr’s terms of service agreement and it checks out OK. (Reminder: I’m not your lawyer)

Is a consultancy also a startup?

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In honor of Denver Startup Week, I’d like to try to answer a question we’ve thought about at Crowd Favorite: are we a startup?

In the most traditional sense: no. Startups, as they’ve come to be known, can typically be seen as small technology-centric companies founded by a handful of individuals to build a produce or service, sometimes for businesses, other times for consumers. Most startups grow quickly, add employees, take on investments, and have some sort of exit planned.

On the other hand, design and development firms (or consultancies) like Crowd Favorite share a lot of traits with startups:

Talent

We hire from the same pool of smart individuals: designers, developers, and even managers. These people typically sit at a computer, work on the web and solve interesting problems.

When hiring a designer, we’re all looking for someone who can create user experiences, solve business problems, and communicate visually. Developers are folks who see technology as a series of moving parts that need to work together to achieve the designed solutions. Managers can take various requirements and goals, turn them into milestones and deliverables, and see the process through.

Technology

We work on the web or, at the least, in the technology space. Designers use the same applications and share the same skills: Photoshop, Illustrator, HTML and CSS, etc. Developers speak many programming languages and often have worked with a handful and can move into others: PHP, Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, Objective C.

Culture

We work hard and like what we do: solving interesting problems with technology. We value freedom to get the job done, we understand the value of research, we appreciate resourcefulness. But we also feel that anything worth doing is worth doing well, and our work reflects that. What we put out into the world is a big reflection of who we are. We provide valuable services and we get paid for it.

Lifestyle

We come to the office to maximize the time we spend with our colleagues or we work remotely in a way that suits everyone, but we don’t clock in. We wear shorts, jeans, slacks, ties, polos, hoodies, t-shirts, sandals, sneakers, slippers. We have ice cream in the freezer and beer in the fridge. A team lunch together to talk about technology is a regular occurrence. We work until we’ve put in a good day’s work and never consider working an 80 hour week.

While startups and design and development consultancies are often working on the same kinds of problems in the same space with the same kinds of people, we’re different in at least a couple of ways:

We don’t typically work all day, every day, including weekends. We have families and outside interests and those are more important than “hustling” to get to launch or investor day. While we love helping a client launch a product, or website, or campaign: we manage reasonable expectations, timelines, and budgets and stick to them without sacrificing our lives.

We also don’t aim for a huge exit, we tend to grow at a steady pace, learn more as technologies and companies evolve, and plan to continue doing the work that looks most interesting to us at any given time.

Was Apple ever a startup? I don’t think so. Is a large agency like Crispin Porter + Bogusky? I wouldn’t say so. Is Crowd Favorite? No. But we’re all working together in an ecosystem that’s no longer an isolated community of designers and developers. This is the new “industry” and the lines between “being” a startup and working “amongst” startups are becoming blurry. The community in Denver know this which is why you see a lot of participants you might not expect: MapQuest, EffectiveUI, SpireMedia, just to name a few.

I look forward to visiting some of our neighbors at the startup crawl later this week.

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Rachel and I have been living in our house for almost two years now. Last year I found a neat little online startup (out of Denver, I later learned) called BrightNest that helps us take care of all the chores and things we never quite knew we should do (plus the ones we did) around here.

Throughout the year it has a great set of “must do” reminders for things like cleaning your oven, testing your smoke detectors, disconnecting your hose bib from any outdoor water spigots. Plus, it starts to ask questions about your house and give specific suggestions tailored to you, for example: we have tips on how to fix scratches in our hardwood floors and a reminder check our sump pump in the basement every spring. Every todo has an estimated time for completion and describes the benefit to you and the house (cost savings, for example).

BrightNest also asks you to tell it about your various appliances and provide make and model number information to not only keep track of this information in your “Homefolio” (I had no idea what kind of fridge water filter we had) but also directly link to online resources like PDF manuals and guides that it can find.

I’d highly recommend BrightNest as it’s another tool that allows both Rachel and I to offload some of the worry and “to do list” that comes with a house. In fact, it allows multiple accounts to share a “house” to help split up the work. Sign up for free at brightnest.com*.

* This is a referral tracking link, as far as I can tell I get no benefit from this