Will Marketing Save WordPress?  ## Metadata - Author: [[WordPress News Podcast - WP Minute]] - Full Title: Will Marketing Save WordPress? - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: #WordPress #communitygrowth #WordPressleadership #WordPresssoftware Author: AI Writer Source: AI Writer Program Reference: N/A --- # Title: Analysis of WordPress Community Growth and Engagement ## Table of Contents: - Introduction - Key Points from Josepha Haden's Talk - Comparison of Past and Present Community Engagement - Influence of Page Builders on User Expectations - WordPress's Response and Future Outlook ### 📝 Summary: The WordPress community is vital for the software's continued success, and recent talks by leaders like Josepha Haden emphasize the need for human involvement to help WordPress thrive. There is a noticeable shift towards engaging with the community more actively, recognizing the importance of user feedback and contributions. ### 📖 Main Content: WordPress's community engagement has evolved over time, with past struggles revolving around issues like the introduction of Jetpack. However, the recent influx of power users and page builder enthusiasts has presented new challenges and opportunities for growth. WordPress is at a crossroads, facing demands for faster innovation and improved features to compete with other platforms like Webflow and Wix. #### 🗒️ Notes: - Increased user diversity in the WordPress community - Historical struggles with community engagement - Impact of page builders on user expectations - WordPress's response through active engagement with the community ### 📖 References: - AI Writer Program ### 🗣️ Paraphrase: 1. Josepha Haden emphasized the importance of human involvement in ensuring the longevity of WordPress. 2. The software's growth is tied to community participation and promotion. ### 🧪 Hypotheses: - Increased community involvement can lead to more innovative features in WordPress. - Collaborative efforts between users and developers can enhance the platform's usability. #### 📊 Methodology: - Conduct surveys and interviews with power users and developers. - Analyze user feedback and feature requests to inform future development. ### ❓ Questions: - How can WordPress effectively balance user demands with software development priorities? - What strategies can WordPress implement to boost community engagement and collaboration? ### 🔮 Future Research: - Explore the impact of user feedback on WordPress's roadmap and decision-making process. - Investigate the role of community-driven initiatives in shaping the future of WordPress. ### 💡 Implications: - Engaging with the WordPress community can lead to more user-oriented features and improvements. - Prioritizing user feedback and collaboration can enhance WordPress's competitive edge in the market. ### ✅ Logical validity: - The call for increased community involvement aligns with the need for user-centric development in WordPress. ## 🎯 Conclusion: WordPress's future success hinges on the active participation and collaboration of its diverse user base. Embracing community feedback and engaging with users can drive innovation and ensure the platform remains competitive in the evolving digital landscape. Short Summary for [Will Marketing Save WordPress?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o) by [Merlin](https://merlin.foyer.work/) "Is WordPress on the Decline? A Discussion on Stats and Trends in the WordPress Community" [00:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=8) WordPress's decline is a contentious topic in the community [02:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=138) WordPress needs more people for thriving [06:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=397) WordPress community's accessibility and approachability [08:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=509) WordPress needs people to thrive [12:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=765) Shift in acceptance of page builders in WordPress community [14:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=884) Marketing in WordPress needs improvement for better impact. [18:59](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=1139) Discussion on the impact of for-profit corporations in the WordPress ecosystem. [20:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=1236) WordPress is facing a plateau season. [24:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=1469) Optimism towards the future of WordPress software and community [26:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=1585) Investment in WordPress by large corporations for long term. [30:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=1810) Consider competitors and specific requirements for projects. [31:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=1910) Comparison of Elementor, Webflow, Wix, Squarespace, and others [35:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=2134) WordPress has unmatched flexibility and opportunity. [37:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=2240) WordPress offers flexibility, robustness, and versatility. [40:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=2445) WordPress plans to focus on its publishing features [42:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=2548) Real leaders are made in war time [46:46](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=2806) Embracing a period of fixing and maintaining instead of always focusing on winning. [48:24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=2904) Discussion on the current state of WordPress and its potential future growth. [52:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=3149) Financial viability of WordPress under scrutiny [54:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=3259) Economic impact on web companies [58:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=3482) Exploring the economic implications of Wix's pricing strategy. [1:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=3600) Content creators seeking support for marketing their WordPress products. [1:03:39](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=3819) WordPress's decentralized nature and diverse user perspectives pose marketing challenges [1:05:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=3925) Marketing WordPress is not an easy task [1:09:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=4168) Balancing marketing messaging for different stakeholders in WordPress ecosystem [1:11:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=4274) The challenges in marketing for different avatars of WordPress [1:14:59](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=4499) Creating a coalition to solve problems and share sponsorship. [1:16:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=4618) WordPress needs to focus on different avatars of users for success [1:20:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=4834) Utilizing structured messaging for effective marketing collaboration. [1:22:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=4949) Encouraging community participation for marketing WordPress [1:26:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=5165) Visit wp.com support for more information --------------------------------- Detailed Summary for [Will Marketing Save WordPress?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o) by [Merlin](https://merlin.foyer.work/) "Is WordPress on the Decline? A Discussion on Stats and Trends in the WordPress Community" [00:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=8) WordPress's decline is a contentious topic in the community - Discussion on the topic of WordPress's decline sparked by presentations from NL's and Yoast - Importance of understanding the decisions made by the WordPress Leadership Council [02:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=138) WordPress needs more people for thriving - To thrive, WordPress needs more people to be excited about it, educate, promote, and market it. - Leadership needs to work better with the community for the future of WordPress. [06:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=397) WordPress community's accessibility and approachability - WordPress community is accessible and approachable, enabling easy interviews with prominent figures like Matt Mullenweg - The question arises whether the community's focus shifted and is now trying - Document Tags: [[wordpress]] [[wordpress marketing]] - Summary: The discussion focuses on the need for better marketing to help WordPress grow and thrive within its community. There is an emphasis on collaboration and innovation, highlighting the importance of engaging users and creators. Ultimately, improved marketing efforts are seen as essential for attracting new users and enhancing WordPress's appeal. - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQtjTtES2o&t=3s mark sansy back for another WP minute Matt mados it's always a pleasure buddy been calling you my calling you my co-host as I go about different podcasts and stuff like that I hope you don't mind I'm fine with it I'm excited to be here I'm not paying you I'm just calling you yeah we'll work we're working on that in the back end it's fine we're working on that in the back end uh we pre we already recorded this similar topic and as I tell you often we're skating to where the puck is headed and and the fine folks at WP product talk actually really took it a step further this subject of uh is WordPress on the decline looking at Stats uh this is stuff that NL talk and and yoast have been um presenting and talking about for for many years of course but of course over the last year uh nl's talk at w Camp EU I believe it was um or over this past year not last year but this past year when you did that presentation in Europe that you know really uh caused some ripples across the WordPress Lake uh they did a great job I'll link that up in the show notes I already did a blog post recapping that that episode on the wp minute but Mark and I largely talked about the same thing looking at Google Trends and and and asking ourselves is WordPress on the decline we're going to talk about again for a little bit but I also want to talk about two other things one I'm going to play this clip from josea from word Camp us 2023 which is almost or probably today like a year old um from when they they did uh state of the word last year or the state of the word update or whatever the heck they call it at the end of word camps and um we'll play that clip because I think it's important to understand all of this stuff um we are always operating in sort of a lag state where josepha and Matt and maybe other folks in the Leadership Council are talking about things and making decisions that that are impacting us throughout the rest of the Year let me let me just play this clip it'll start to make more sense I'm picking up um deep into her talk at the future of WordPress but here we go you're trying to figure out how to get involved with WordPress I've got a simple first thing one use the software so you're already doing it probably right that's the easiest way of joining into the WordPress project to make sure that we continue to thrive into the future because we exist for as long as people want to use our software that little moment right there that we exist for as long as people want to use our software and the rest of this talk at least in my opinion and and I also wrote a summary about this this presentation is josephi was really hitting on the fact that WordPress needs humans now like I took that when I listen to that entire talk and I know this was just a little blip in that radar talk so if you've never heard it before listen listen to the whole thing but what she's encouraging for WordPress to thrive is for more people to you know to be excited about it to educate to promote it and to Market it again a call back to what this today's episode is about in that moment one year ago which was probably realized a year before that talk was created WordPress is going to we're in that Plateau right now like let's all just come to to reality some people are alarmists and saying it's it's going to you know it's the bottom is going to fall out the we're looking at numbers and it is going down but it's not really going down that much I think everyone realized that yeah we're going to hit a plateau we're 20 years in yeah we haven't innovated as fast as we wanted to um it's not as sexy as the next competitor it is kind of old and lethargic but in order to keep going we know we're not going to get those features in fast enough to all of a sudden this thing's going to start going up and to the right again so oh by the way we need people now like WordPress needs people and that was a little reflection in my opinion of leadership saying we need to start working with our community a little bit better so as much as we uh criticize them about maybe the lack of communication and the lack of working with the community in my opinion that talk is what we're seeing now or help bring us to where we are now with Anne McCarthy Rich Taber even Jamie marsin joining head of WordPress YouTube the we're starting to see those dominoes fall from that talk in my opinion leadership has said we need the humans again right you're feeling a little bit appreciated you're feeling a lot more appreciated these days as a content creator you know a decade after I've been in this game where I felt so underappreciated it wasn't even funny um so I I think what we're starting to see are those those cards play out josepa and team realizing a year ago and probably many months or a year before that going oh God we got to make a plan to reconnect with this community because that's how WordPress is going to grow over the next couple of years it's not going to be a Gutenberg block or a feature that we throw in we got to get people on board with the messaging you could argue like I do 10 years too late or right on time I don't know depends on what uh how optimistic you are but that was my opinion I wanted to play that from josea because I Look to those talks from josepha and Matt Mullen WG state of the words as the Milestones to the year ahead so when you start pounding on the table why this why that why not them why not us I like to go back a year ago and say look at these Milestone presentations from leadership and what can you reverse engineer from that in your moment of time that's that's how I look at this stuff your thoughts meaty subject but do you have any any thoughts on that yeah you made a couple points there uh yeah there's a lot there um I mean with that with that little blurb specifically I would be really interested to see if that's actually what was meant by that if there was anything kind of behind that or if it's just kind of like again kind of connecting dots that may or may not be there um but again I mean you know reality and what's going on again I got to tip my hat all the time to an McCarthy T all the people that are doing interviews and even Matt Mullen obviously doing interviews like again I always say this but like I'm newer here right and I I would say the one really cool thing about this whole Space of Wordpress is just how seemingly not all I wouldn't say like extremely easily but how seemingly accessible everyone is even like you know somebody like Matt mull right like I mean we could I know you've interviewed him the product talk interview product talk interviewed him recently I'm sure if I reached out to him he would at least consider it you know what I mean like you know it's just it's really cool cuz you can't do that elsewhere I I don't think that you it's as easy in other places so can't call up Tim apple and be like hey man get on the phone yeah seriously and um so I think that that's really cool really really awesome um at the same time like the question that I would have to you trying to put the puzzle pieces together in my head would be we're talking if you if you used this last year as like maybe a signal that we're trying to get back into like the community and like at least leverage more of the great minds in the community and like the in the opinions and all that sort of stuff which that's a deeper conversation but assuming that is partially the case right partially the the the methodology what do you what happened when I wasn't here so to speak and when other people weren't here like beforehand like was it really Community Centric and then it fell off because it got really big really fast and then it kind of is coming back now because we realize we need that you mention it in kind of like the opening monologue so to speak there like what what what was the the condensed version of all that did we did that kind of get lost at some point and I want to a caveat real quick though because this whole sense of community there is absolutely a WordPress Community but as you've literally said before it doesn't actually mean anything in in one aspect of you it's open source software like I told like when we first started having these conversation I was like why don't they just do this this and this or why don't they listen to us and they're like it that's not how it works so this sense of I feel like a lot of language thing I was talking about this on my live stream yesterday the language in this space though is extremely confusing so I that's just that's kind of where I'm at I know I threw a lot back at you there but yeah yeah um yeah so for sure this is just a little blip on the radar that little snippet the way that I digested her presentation was they need people for WordPress to thrive like everyone needs to get on board in some form or fashion and if you continue that clip from where I left it off she starts talking about like learning WordPress and and um and earlier in the presentation also talking about how WordPress can literally change lives and and I also agree with that because it changed my life and it changed so many other lives that I know from either people starting services business product business Etc we're all able to uh Thrive personally when WordPress is doing well and I think that was that was her sort of message to everyone what was the community like before this um I think we're we're in that unique interesting time where there was never this this feeling that we have in WordPress while some of the arguments are the same um we we might be at a different sort of uh velocity or our footprint is a lot bigger so for example uh you know when when folks like kg and and all these other folks uh are you know railing against you know why leadership doesn't pay attention to the the website builders that are out there why aren't they listening to us we're the ones making a 100 sites a thousand sites for clients like we're in the weeds building this thing make this software better for us this was the same argument that I had 10 years ago with Mullen WG when Molen WG was shipping jetpack as the the way that WordPress is going to grow right and I was like wait a minute how is how how are you saying jetpack is grown or how how are you tying together wordpress's growth because of Jetpack which was something that he said at uh at oppress nomics which is what led me to my first interview uh with him talking about that I didn't pull any clips from that episode but I will in the future and there's there's the same kind of uh Strife it's just in it's different sizes now then it was just jetpack and now it's like you're looking at all of Wordpress going why haven't you made you know WordPress better for us uh instead of this little you know plugin we've all had we've had these these struggles for a while I think what's interesting now is that because the software has gotten better over the last let's call it 10 years and the uh introduction of other page building tools name all of them all of them are responsible you know Beaver Builder divy Elementor bricks every page builder um visual composer has brought in a whole new breed of of customers and users into or users into WordPress over the last let's say 5 to 10 years and now that customer or I keep saying customer but now that user is going hey when is this thing getting better you know I got into this game five8 10 years ago and um you know I was able to use these plugins but now I I really don't see anything changing too dramatically over this over the course of this 5 to 8 to 10 years like why isn't it getting better and we have now a much more um we have more of those folks than the previous 10 years which were just hardcore Geeks and developers who were touching WordPress and just having those conversations off to the side either literally building WordPress or didn't give a [ \_\_ ] about you know workflows and easy to use software because they were like man I'm cracking open my code editor and I'm building these themes and plugins that's what I do I don't care about page Builders I mean the I've said this to you before on the show before back then every like if you use a page builder you were getting that same sort of like animosity that maybe bricks users give to Elementor people today right like when a bricks user goes oh my God you're using Elementor foolish right like I can't believe you still use that I'm on this bricks thing which is way better back then if Mo the biggest crowd the biggest audience here were developers still are largely but back then it was just pure developers and if you brought a page builder into the game you're just they were looking at you going get out of here with that thing now again a decade later people are like okay I guess the things are here to stay I mean we have Gutenberg and now we have Elementor as a massive company in the WordPress space people like okay I guess yeah I guess these things are St so now there's a group of people a lot larger and a lot more vocal you know than the geeky developer who just I don't care about anything else I'm just going to write this code and optimize it myself and we have we're in this hitting this Crossroads now um that WordPress has never seen the power user who knows how to use this stuff and knows how to sell it is like give me better give me faster and give it to me now because we're dying out here compared to the competitors webflow Wicks whatever um which I don't fully buy but that's the sentiment um and I don't think WordPress has ever seen this before and that's why it's very important I think for WordPress and this is why you see a concerted effort from automatic whether you agree with it or not um to really you know dig their heels into into the Community again you could say 10 years too late um but also they got to do it and I'm glad that they're doing it so we just sort of I just sort of keep them at a at an arms length is kind of a harsh statement but I just okay let's what do you want how do you want to do this thing I've been saying it for years you know kg's been saying it for a couple years and it's like give it to us and let's let's let's work through this and see if we can get there so are you saying that they've never really tried to do it like this then to youring oh God this is no like if you were to look at I mean look at so we're going to talk about the marketing stuff and again I'll implore people to go and watch the wp product talk um presentation because marketing came up a lot like how are we going to make WordPress better uh we need you know better marketing and does that marketing come from from automatic or does it come from a Consortium of of Brands you know in the space I have a real life story about you know ad consortiums and brand consortiums that are that's not too good um I'll save it for the end here but um certainly WordPress or you have to be careful certainly automatic has not reached out to work with content creators like this before right even though I feel like Ann's just on her own side quest and it's not an official thing um it's as official as it gets and that's good we saw the failures of the official WordPress make marketing team right couldn't do anything um in Ray's post today on the tavern oh excuse me on the repository uh she said she know she quoted some of Yo's pain points from when he was the marketing lead for like nine months or 11 months whatever it was three months I I don't know what it was but he was like I can't do anything like here's here's a guy who not only runs the most popular at the time the most popular SEO plug-in Ever Knows SEO in marketing like the back of his hand is a prominent figurehead in the WordPress Community he stepped in and he was like nope can't do it right because he looked at it and goes any marketing person who who knows marketing and needs access to resources cannot do this job in a volunteer environment so the marketing team has failed and Frozen not from the end users not from their perspectives but just from the fact that they don't have the access the data or the um the the power to really shape a marketing message for open source WordPress right my my biggest arguments against the Jamie marsin um gig that happened so very difficult you have media core also head of headed by an automatic lead I think Reyes is doing a a phenomenal job uh but it's still an automatic lead doing a media core trying to build out a media core experiment I think it's going fairly good in in the first couple of months it is exactly what I had expected it to be a more professional organized way to say here's the things coming out of Wordpress do you all want to cover this content um cool thumbs up I think it's good but we all have to remember this isn't automatic is the one leading the charge of of what's happening out of that group and us as media guys and gals choose to cover it or not right it's up to us and then you have the tavern which is owned by Audrey Capital uh Matt company so you have a lot of these places that are going to help market and push WordPress yes but also controlled by automatic at the same time and you take that with your grain of salt however however big that is but that's a long way of getting to no automatic has never really pushed into the Creator space for messaging like this always have supported Community but more so on like the hey help us build WordPress thing not not the help us get this message out about WordPress do you think there's a reason for that do you think like it were just for lack of a better way to explain it just like busy before and just didn't think that it was necessary and now they see now they see all like the you know the sharks in the water so to speak again it's a little bit hyperbolic but like they see like other they see like how big of a deal influencer marketing so to speak is and Creator based marketing and now we're like you know we should probably consider you actually do you think that that's the problem that I have with these conversations is they're all they're all really good but like we talked about off camera like you don't want to create like just an echo chamber of just like random speculation and and random ideas so like I just feel like I need to do a better job of this but like I feel like there's we have the access to the people that I assume are taking act like you know there's definitely rooms that people are making decisions in and like those ideas are you know potentially flowing down but obviously we have we have the other situations like we like we talked to an and that's fantastic you know the YouTuber program is fantastic apparently that's not like a top down thing that's more of just like again like you said kind of a side quest and cool that's awesome that that freedom exists but I feel like in some of the bigger things the bigger messaging pieces the bigger the bigger plays automatic is a is a for-profit corporation right and they and WordPress is a big part of what they do.org and.com and all that so like I feel like these things that we're talking about they have answers some like somebody somebody has answers to this you know what I mean so I feel like that's that's part of the thing that um you know when I ask these types of questions it's like how did these things come to be and we're just kind of like putting the you know trying to put the dots you know connect the dots sometimes so it's a little it's a little tough um I don't know I don't exactly know where I was going with that yeah no I I get I get what you're saying like like why do you think this is happening well again I'll just go back to to what I said think it's because they've realized that there is a we are hitting a plateau so again if you the wp product talk presentation old talk and and Yos um talk about their numbers and on either the the slight decline um in installs the numbers can be measured in different ways so obviously check out that episode if you want to see how it how it all came you know it came together there's nothing that is we're not watching WordPress crashing right so there's that so let's let's hold on a second we're not we're not crashing here but I think they've realized that yeah we're going to hit a plateau I mean how at some point like you're not going to keep having that velocity of growth right because um you know technolog is going to get better faster and competitors going to come into the market like they have and it's going to slow down the way that WordPress um um continues to grab that market share so I think that the reason is is yeah they've identified that we're going to be hitting a plateau season for whatever however long that is a couple years um and now now it's time to look outward from just like the the folks who build and write lines of code for WordPress to the folks who are marketing and and possibly implementing um you know WordPress for for their clients and I totally agree with you um you know it it would be great to get people with direct answers on the line and and ask them I do think uh that 90% of this all roads lead back to and um have Matt on every call would be near impossible um so I can only operate off of these like key presentations especially from josea right executive director of Wordpress so I I have to look at these presentations as this is what you're telling us right this is your update um one of the benefits to the media Corp is that josepha will be in the media the next media Corp meeting for us media folks um which is fantastic because now this could help bridge that gap of look we need to talk to people we need to answer ask these questions um you know done in a professional manner you know with that caveat because a lot of people in you know especially on in the Twitter sphere is just like well ask them why we don't have this block you know why can't I drag this over there and import that it's like well this is that's what not this is this is not for that this is for the you know the the health of overall WordPress and where this whole thing is going you know you can take your feature concerns at another time um so yeah maybe these efforts will help us get there I wanted to to play this clip before we start talking about the marketing side of it um because I think it sets the tone of of what we're all feeling right now that's the way that I perceive this this talk I've watched it a couple times um yeah August 31st 2023 so literally one-year-old tomorrow is when she gave this presentation so I think we're right on track and if you continue listening to this to this she starts talking about the like the learn efforts and we just saw what a couple weeks ago the the redesign of of the learn site and the efforts that they're putting into the learn site so this is exactly the proof in in my pudding is to hear her talk about this stuff and literally see it you know six month or actually eight months in the future finally coming what am I saying eight months a year a year into the future finally the the learn site has improved which is one of things that she talked about like we have to get learning better and easier and more accessible so I Look to these moments the Matt Mullen Wick state of the words and whenever she does her um I don't know what they're called but her Capstone events at word Camp us um I look at those as you know that's that's the signal that's the direction um i' love to have them on every call but I I just have to use what I have in front of me certainly um what is so to kind of summarize this obviously from your perspective and I know I'm sure we've talked about this but I don't know if it's been I've been direct I've directly asked it like this what is your in August late August of 2024 based on everything that you know we've seen here what is your current perspective on like the I don't want to there's probably multiple ways to say it but like the health of Wordpress the uh at wordpress.org like the open source software the health of it the current position of it and more so than the current position like where do you see it where do you see it like in the past 3 years versus the next three years or something like that you know what I mean like what what's your what's your gauge on this now because I feel like even since we've started talking it's it's possibly changed slightly not heavily but I feel like more more conversations have been had more more things have been said you know so where are you at right now I'm much more optimistic on the software side of things and I guess and the community side of things um not yeah not I guess it is I'm much more I'm much more optimistic on both the software and the community than I was three years ago three years ago I was like oh boy like there was you know but but also like the economics uh the economy sorry was also weird for agencies like a lot of agencies three years ago were like what are we like what's happening uh we really get to tighten this belt now during covid everybody was like I'm printing money and this is amazing example right you know but coming out of that people are like where the hell did that all go and and no I think it was n that brought this up in the in the presentation but you know when you look at the swings in the economy a lot of people this is why I always say like this is why WordPress is strongest Advantage I know it's easy to throw out that strong advantage of oh it's just open source but in a top down approach there are massive organizations that go uh yeah we're done paying Adobe for their CMS $10 million a year in licensing and we're going to shift over to an open- Source model and that's that's an investment for a long term so when you can when that Glacier moves over of some massive organization that says okay now we're going to we're going to skip this Microsoft SharePoint or adobe CMS I forget what their is called um um and and and and the oracles stuff like whatever big corporate entity that they're paying millions and millions of dollars for never mind the salaries and support licenses that they have to pay for and they invest in a WordPress or any open source but they invest in a WordPress that's not just they're not going to change out of that decision a year from there they go okay well WordPress didn't work no no no like those organizations don't move that way so if you can get somebody in like that that's an investment in in WordPress open open source word press for 5 to 10 years because that's just how those corporations move and they're investing so much time and money into these things so economies the economy can play a big role in adoption um it's easy to say WordPress is free um and while it's not free at that scale it is magnitudes less expensive than a Microsoft SharePoint in in an adobe so all of that is to say is I think we're in a better place uh three years I feel it um with all the noise that I hear I don't see anyone actually leaving when Gutenberg launched I saw people leaving right like a year into it people are like I'm out like that's when I saw other people looking at other no code Solutions statamic people you know developers that were building plugins for WordPress going you know what I don't even want to sell plugins anymore for this space I want to go just go after this other stuff and I saw people leaving I don't see people leaving here so yes I I don't see too many people leaving either I mean I'm I'm have my finger on the the pulse of the data which as a side note it would be amazing if we get even better data I know wordpress.org or automatic or somebody has like decent data that we we've potentially looked at before or I've seen it on other stuff and things like that maybe it was the YouTuber call or whatever but um that would be amazing if we could like do more surveys or something to get like a broader Mass I know we're just dealing with a ton of uh information though so that's tough but um what was I going to say the the thing that you're saying though is I know we're not pulling up the charts like we did in our our I'm building one I'm building one right now so we can so we can pull it up because I knew you were going to go there but but like that's what I'm what I'm kind of thinking is you know if you look at the last three years the next three years obviously you can't predict the future but like even the trends over the last if you extrapolate back like 10 like five or 10 years if you go back those those charts we looked at like comparatively just like Google Trends to the other platforms it makes sense that WordPress is kind of plateauing because there's more options now and things like that but to to there's a I feel like there's a subtle conversation Nuance to be had where yeah I don't see a lot of people leaving WordPress but I don't actually even hear that argument that much I hear people not coming to Wordpress because the other stuff's either easy easier to get into or is just like marketed better like I feel like I don't I personally from what I've seen I don't think there's a Exodus problem I think there's a what's the word um awareness or there's a better word for it I'm escaping me right now but like a not even a searchability just like a you know um I don't know I I'll it'll come to me but like finding it like almost finding WordPress and realizing that it is ultimately one of the best Solutions um you know I did like though I'll say this and I'll let you go over the chart um Mark's live stream I don't know when this is going out but like um pronounce his last name for me that you just did oh benzak yeah Mark Pekin's uh presentation there was a specific line the whole thing was great but the specific line in there where was like don't like like realize that there are competitors and they might be better for certain things like I do actually like that approach I mean I personally probably would use WordPress for 99% of the things but if something comes out that WordPress isn't specific for or like you really need like an easy super duper easy like e-commerce thing certainly there's woocommerce there's shart but like in some cases maybe Shopify is thing we got to be honest with ourselves as far as like actual requirements because every Project's different so my point though in saying but I think a lot of times WordPress could be the answer and I think a lot of times people aren't getting to that step so I think that's really where potentially hopefully automatic is understanding that piece because I don't I don't see Exodus problem I see like a you know an entrance problem you know like getting into it yeah yeah and hold that thought for the for like the marketing stuff but when we we look at the so for those watching we have the Google Trends and and I think n brought this up too that I think his data or at least one of those slides was based off of this and it's just the keyword of Wordpress which I mean it's telling but it's not like that means that WordPress is interesting uh or or that somebody was actually searching for give me a WordPress website um and same goes for all this other stuff like WordPress web flow Wix we're just this is just a search term Trend um you know from a from a 50,000 foot view you could say that it's it's popularity but it doesn't necessarily mean that this leads to a WordPress install a web flow install a Wix install the problem real quick the problem with this this experiment that you know I ran the other day I told you about and then we did the thing and we're doing here the problem is that when you think of a webflow website there's I'm going to say there's basically nothing else that you're going to search in order to find webflow or Wix with WordPress it may be interesting to add like an Elementor or like a divvy to the comparison and then you'd have to somehow do like a complicated math equation to try to figure out like yeah oh we got to take like at least a percentage of this into account so I'm not saying again like this isn't like fully telling either but it would be interesting to just see like to kind of start some of that data and again Elementor is pretty low but it's incredible that element Mentor alone right is the same as web flow yeah according to these yeah so uh and Wix just destroys it right so if you go then if you go Squarespace actually you know what you can do you can do visual composer yeah that's a big one yeah but it's not even on the I think the problem with visual composer is it's just in a theme and most people don't even know uh let's go Squarespace like I'd be interested like divian Beaver Builder but I still think Elementor is probably going to be the biggest yeah in this this uh oh wow okay and if we take if we take these out so if you're just if you're just listening you're not seeing us uh modify these charts uh let me just remove Wicks and squar space so we can just see this battle wow this right here is a really interesting chart actually M because this you know we're seeing here on the screen for you listeners if we're just podcasting here is webflow Elementor and divvy search term comparisons and Google Google trending and pretty much all similar especially more recently but that's like those are two WordPress page voters versus like a whole platform in webflow so again I I said this the other day I was live streaming I was like webflow is like the second thing out of Wordpress people's mouth which is fine like that's whatever but I just find so interesting cuz like it's the it's the smallest one like they must just be hammering along the lines of the same people that would like be like WordPress tinkerers and like kind of agency type owners I guess I guess like web flow is just not really for DIY at all like they probably haven't like gone that route too much no yeah definitely not definitely not um yeah so I mean I I think you know when you look at uh so this is just a five-year chart right when I think when we had pre-recorded this and or previously recorded this we were looking at like a 10-year chart or something like that and WordPress was just massive right and dominant and certain it was literally following you know my argument to the first 10 years of Wordpress was man it was the only thing that was out there that people were able to build websites with uh you know of course launched blogs which were very popular back then it was the social media before social media and people were just like yeah give me this thing I I need it this is technology this is the internet I'm connecting with people give it to me and then when you crossed that 10year path where you started to see the rise of Wick Squarespace web flow all these other Shopify more so than web flow of course that was an indication of yeah 10 years in consumer internet has matured and a lot more competition prices went down for technology servers storage bandwidth you know back then everything else was way more expensive to operate and then just an increase in competition and softwares that came out um and WordPress had to battle that none of these other like all these other platforms had the luxury of like looking at um yeah you know the the past decade of Wordpress and and building on it I make this case all the time it's like you know if you're a new form Builder I work for Gravity forms and you're a new form Builder you come into the space and you get to build your form build build Builder plug-in based on off of like the last 14 years that gravity forms has been in business right and you don't have to you don't have to worry about all of the backwards compatibility and all the stuff WordPress same thing these platforms come out they can look at WordPress be like well we ain't doing that and it's going to be a hosted solution because we're not giving it to every individual to download and do whatever they want with which is something that I think is you know vastly overlooked in this this this desire for WordPress to be better is that you can still take this thing off the shelf put it onto your computer and break it apart and look at it and do things and it doesn't even have to be um you know a a a building a website you could just take it apart and learn and understand code from it and move on with your life like these are things that you know you know you see people speedrunning video games with like a you know an old like Atari stick and you're like wait this that it's not even supposed to be using that well guess what I'm a human I can do crazy wild things to prove you know to prove my point um WordPress has this flexibility and this opportunity that are unmatched across the board you know in my opinion well I don't know if anybody in I don't know if anybody that actually knows anything about WordPress would argue with that that the last point there I mean obviously it has an incredible flexibility robustness versatility whatever you want to call it because that's why we're here I think a I think the vast majority of people that's why they're here right they're either you look at the the big Avatar they're either like you know a large Enterprise which I don't have direct experience with but I've learned from guys like you Brian cords and stuff like they're large Enterprise people that need like an open source solution highly customized highly curated makes perfect sense there they're either di wires that literally just heard that potentially older diyes too seemingly got I got to put that asteris in there because it was probably something that they found probably you know in that first 10e Mark potentially they heard about it they've always tinkered with it very interesting that's a little bit of a generalization there but but but they've also found that it was it was free open source I don't know how they necessarily got sold on that but again it's probably like a very cheap option too um and it's versatile which is incredible or you have the people that have kind of outgrown maybe other tools you know maybe they went to webflow or they went to uh Wix or Squarespace and they're like okay well now what I can't do X Y and Z how do I get how do I you know how do I add a store how I do this or whatever and then then maybe they find a YouTube video or something and it's like okay WordPress but I mean I don't know how deep we want to go into this but like I really just think the question becomes like there's a couple questions that just pop up from what you're saying there though is the first one is that obviously WordPress was first there and they had 10 golden years of being the only so you know roughly 10 golden years being the only one there which is awesome well it's very it's like this is extremely natural I'm not a huge history buff I'm sure we could find examples of times where like somebody innovates and they're there for a period of time and then six other people come in they learn from all the mistakes they build a better product in a fraction of the time better you know subjectively in a fraction of the time then ultimately where that ends up going and I'm not saying this is WordPress I'm just saying this is this is a historic this is has to be a historical Trend where like over the next 10 years 15 20 years the first one can dig itself out from from under that hole and then it ends up going either by the wayside or just like way more of a plateau or way less of a of a of a player in the space I guarantee we can see that somewhere industry somebody apple and Microsoft perfect examples you know yeah I mean New England Patriots this guy big Tom Brady guy um you can only win for so long man and then like people age out of success and that's you know exactly so I mean the thing the the thought would be what do you do there I mean because again I feel like this is kind of like in that spot so it's like are you going to you know there's a phrase like adapt or die I don't know if that perfectly applies here but that's like one thing that kind of comes to mind there's another thing where it's just like maybe now the second half of Wordpress potentially or whatever is more of just like a more mature phase where it's like hey you know what our original goal was just to be like a publishing platform we still have that in our philosophy 20 years later although over that time the philosophy by the community and the third party ecosystem has been extended incredibly and we don't really align exactly with that but we're not going to like say no you can't do that so now it's like we're just going to go back to Our Roots I'm saying this possible option like we're just going to go back to Our Roots because we we're not like directly we are kind of competing with people we're not kind of competing with these other ones and like we want more people on the platform but we're also like not exactly we're not exactly offering the same thing as a Squarespace and a Wix so we're just going to stick to what we know and what we pioneered as like the publishing piece and we're going to do that and we're going to let the third party people just take care of whatever they want and if you need something other than blog and Publishing features ask someone else that is kind of the vibe that I'm hearing and I'm trying to piece all this together and uh it's actually not a terrible plan assuming everyone still cares enough and assuming the world doesn't continue to spiral into this like complete lack of you know data protection open like they like I genuinely believe that like as a younger person like I genuinely believe like way less people care about open source I do but I'm saying like you have all these you know young whipper snappers right that are just out here on their phones like getting their data stolen all the time or whatever you know wherever and then they have all this other concern and like the if you asked a kid right now how do they set up a website I think honestly they'd probably be like more like oh just go follow my Instagram rather than like follow my blog and stuff and this might be cyclical this might come back you know the kind of the other way I hope it does I'm trying to kind of do that with some of the stuff I do and I know you are but I know there's a lot there but that's kind of that's kind of my new understanding of what we got going on here to an extent I don't know if any of that resonates I think what good leaders will recognize is how to deal with either failure or downturn or you're just not the number one pick and everyone should be comfortable with losing um I am very comfortable with losing in fact I feel like I'm losing every single day and it's what keeps me coming back um when you're at the top and and like that first first 10year ride of of Wordpress it's phenomenal like you can't even imagine how what that's like but we've you know when you say like has this ever happened in history before you look at any successful tech company that just like wow I can't believe how fast they're Rising look at this this is amazing and then they crash and burn because there's this artificialness to it um and in this is rough statement but it's like in in the the real leaders are made in the war time right the real downturn stuff on how you are going to you know keep the mission going keep people uh you know backing the cause and genuinely like continue to build your thing to keep it going um we're in that time largely with with WordPress and automatic this is why I feel like we're going to have like a real automatic Reckoning pretty soon where where something has to like the Band-Aid is going to get ripped off and it's going to be like we're automatic we're here to make money with WordPress WordPress the best place to get it is wordpress.com Andor jetpack and then by the way we have this open- Source thing it's not said like that today today it's just like Matt Community automatic like we're all in the same room together I think it's going to be much more of like 60% of Wordpress is a automatic 40% is the community in terms of the the package and the presentation when it comes from wordpress.com and automatic um because they need to get serious in survival again just my opinion but I don't think people should just get comfortable with winning all the time do you have to win all the time do you have to have the the commanding lead of all content Management Systems um my opinion is is no and when you're when you're not finding that success is when you're learning those lessons and you constantly shift when I started the wp minute everybody was joining the membership I was like boom I solved WordPress news Community journalism I got it people were Comm you know sending me clips they were writing you know blog posts for me and it died out and I am constantly re-evolved and uh evolving the the packaging and the presentation of the wp minute uh a standout um WordPress product that is doing just that is beaver Builder right Beaver Builder still a successful company still going strong still profitable by all accounts like I you know I don't see any I don't see any downturn everyone their prices are going up so they they're they're understanding that they have to stay sustainable and they're and they're not um chasing the Elementor in the divies and the bricks they they have a strong user base how well they got there early number one but they put out a great product and they listen to their customers what the hell is wrong with that you know at one time I jumped into the cess pool of Facebook groups which is the worst thing for for me to do and somebody was like what's up with Beaver Builder they haven't done anything and yada ya Y and I was like oh suddenly a business that's been in years been in business for over a decade serving their customers happy healthily and without chasing the buzzwords is a bad thing and people just like laugh emojis on it it's like why do I even show up here because this crowd just wants free fast and $29 lifetime plans right there's nothing wrong with building a sustainable profitable company that isn't super sexy and isn't just dominant all the time um in my opinion both from like a product perspective and from you know a personal perspective like I freaking like I love to lose because I I learn that lesson I love to win of course but I also I don't mind living in that moment and when I'm winning I already know there's going to be a downturn now this is off obviously because I grew up a lot in sales and uh you know the deal is never done until the client signs and everyone says yes until you know the terms come in front of them but money hits the bank yeah so it's like I don't think we always have to win and and I you know Matt said something too and and I think you just reiterated it like what what would it look like if we just spent a year Frozen fixing stuff you're going to have the people who are like oh you're going to lose ground to all these other people yeah well sometimes you need to stop and do a spring cleaning I don't know how many people would actually say that I I think a lot of people would freak out about like no features for a year look how look how they freak out about no features now what are the features I don't think I I maybe we're maybe we're I know we're very connected but I think we're talking a slightly different crowds cuz I I get way I know a lot of people in the community I know the most amount of people in the community yes you do I thought I what I hear more of is is more of the fixing side like there's they've created problems obviously and again we're we're leaving out a large portion of this that goes kind of without said of like the amount of technical debt that you rack up when you do all this type of thing so we talked about that kind of before but that I hear more from that angle rather than like oh why don't they have this this and this like yeah for sure like you know mobile responsiveness or whatever like but I feel like at least people I talk to it's more of like I don't like what has been done so far so if we could fix that I feel like they would be happy about that surely no surely everybody wants everything to be perfect and done as fast as possible and new stuff I get that but that's not realistic one other point I want to make is that you said first thing are you saying that we're in the the stage of Wordpress where Hard Times create strong men or are you saying that we haven't gotten there yet no I think we're I think we've been in it I think we've Loosely been in it I don't think you're going to see like again I don't think you'll ever see WordPress Crash and Burn I think it if if if there were ever like a five-year D downturn it would be slow it wouldn't be off a cliff yeah I don't I don't see that as being possible either and I'm not sure many people are actually saying that or suggesting that I think it's more of just like they see they see that the growth rate is not a growth rate really anymore they just see that it's a plateau or they see that's maybe a slight decline or like certain stats are indicating that again not the only people talking about that and in five years you could have the upturn could be 10x because all of these people who left WordPress to go to these other platforms are now are will come back to Wordpress because here's the equation in my opinion and you know I'd love to hear from folks listening to this webflow let's say Squarespace Wix webflow um Shopify what props this up what what props those product companies up what holds them up customers people giving them money right that is what keeps them going so there's always that that struggle of marketing dollars product dollars you know taking from one platform and getting them on boarding them maybe they go one square space guy goes to Wix goes to to Shopify the only thing that props those companies up is dollars and money and users and customers in the WordPress world it's open source so WordPress is propped up just like Josephus said In that clip is by the people we need people to be using it and people to be interested in it in it because if they're not there's no WordPress people keep WordPress propped up dollars keep Squarespace Wix Shopify and web flow propped up because as soon as the dollars dry out those companies will fall off a cliff dollars can dry out in WordPress and you won't see an off the cliff you might see a gradual decline but it won't be off the cliff those other will go out of business there's no going out of business in open source WordPress I mean I'm not going to act like I know exactly how everything works here but like just trying to I don't disagree with what you're saying I definitely agree with the fact that like the other side is like dollars 100% agree but I think is the term reductive is it too reductive to say that WordPress is just people because if there was no money there would also be no no people like there would be like in in the current state of like how the world works like this is a big conversation around the contributing thing for contributing thing for either if you're sponsored or if you're just doing free contribution or whatever like and we've had this conversation before but it gets very nuanced there I feel like are you like let's I I think what I think you're saying is yes at the core of it if there's no because it's open source there's no people people are propping it up I get that but is that actually the full story meaning like the contributors that are contributing a lot of them are getting paid by either automatic or a daddyy or whatever and if WordPress again we're playing hypotheticals here but if WordPress went on a a a strict downturn and like it got actually Bleak it's nowhere near that nor do I really think it's going to get there but like if but it it's only not going to get there if we recognize that these things are possible we can't like think anything is infallible that is that is literally how you go extinct regardless of what you are but if if WordPress did look very Bleak don't you think like a god daddy I'm making names up here but like don't you think like a GoDaddy or somebody would be like H we're going to like they might reconsider because what they're doing is they are literally paying people to go work to some degree on it or maybe they would pull back or something like that but yeah but that's but what I'm saying is that's ultimately goes back to the money it it it's people for sure but it goes back to the money now you may have a situation where somebody's like okay well I want to turn WordPress around I'm just going to volunteer more or I'm gonna whatever um like you take the money out of it somehow I just I just don't know how that's like a actual reality the economics of a project being propped up by people versus money is the web flow like again well Squarespace any any of these Squarespace Shopify Shopify is a better example Shopify because it's the most expensive although web flow is pretty up there for e-commerce um or no web flow is a good example because webflow is probably the one that web is probably the one that you do have to worry the most about this because long term 100% long-term not right now not right now but long term um Shopify will probably win because of all the investment money that it already has and the brand Equity that it owns um throughout people's you know cognitive level of understanding like if I want e-commerce I'm generally looking at Shopify um but webflow would be one where suddenly just like we see with freaking inflation and streaming services going up and you know YouTube premium was once 12 bucks and now it's 22 bucks or whatever the numberous I'm just like how why I'm on the family plan yeah I'm just like I I don't even understand how you're charging me more because the way I see it as a tech person bandwidth costs are going down but then people are saying well energy costs are going up so B so there's like all of those economics impact those companies where if bandwidth and storage and energy and um payroll and tax taxes and operating in different uh Global governments and environments and tax regulation all that stuff is what impacts these companies like a web and investors right and investors like give me a return on this investment or we're not giving you more money for the runway you need to hire more people to do more marketing to do more advertising all of those economics re are are straightforward impacting um these companies web flow Wick Squarespace space Shopify and in the WordPress side it's while yes you make the argument of like don't a lot of people get paid yes but this is that tug-of war of Open Source where WordPress is open source so it's not like GoDaddy has to pay a WordPress license as long as they they can anyone can use it they don't have to give it back to Wordpress if they don't want to but they choose to because they realize it makes all of Wordpress better which does improve their position but they don't have to plenty of hosts out there that do nothing for WordPress and still sell air quotes WordPress hosting and and that is a massive you know lead flow for them is give me that WordPress site for five bucks a month and they happily say yes and they don't give back so yeah these other companies are tied to that economic success for them whereas WordPress you know it's it's not like that uh yeah I mean I I I guess I get what you're saying I'm just not fully I guess I just don't fully it hasn't fully clicked with me yet because I still feel like God Dy is a for-profit corporation and pretty much everything that they do is I would have to assume we're picking on a Go Daddy but it could be anybody I'm assuming that a company of that size cares about money because they wouldn't be there if they didn't care about money so like if you take that and then you say okay well why are they working on WordPress well it's because it makes the money but if it stopped making them money which you could you could Theory craft a world where that didn't happen because that's effectively what we're doing then they wouldn't probably be working on it and they would go to stat stat Matic or whatever like something something else so like in that world and in that chain of events I just still feel like it comes back to money I understand the Nuance of this situation it's not the same right but in a world where you have to have money to eat and to survive I don't know how it doesn't come back to the money and I'm not saying I even like that I'm just saying like I don't I don't know how I what would really be interesting is if just as again a theory crafting experiment is if Wix said oh we have a licensed version of Wix now and any web host can install it that would really push the boundaries of of um how WordPress can Sur like how WordPress survives like from an open source perspective because if Wix is so great and so easy to use and all of a sudden they're like oh yeah any like Go Daddy you can license the Wix Builder wow what would happen then and at what cost and then it's the economics game again at what cost does does that happen does a Wix come in and say hey GoDaddy it's a buck a website it's a buck a website for every website you launch with the Wix Builder but then in three years it's uh five bucks a website and in you know 10 years it's 10 bucks a website and at what point do you go back to that to that same struggle of of Economics where GoDaddy goes oh that's interesting and they Buy in just like any other like like we all did with streaming services Netflix 10 bucks a month and every like okay yes give it to me um and now you're 30 bucks a month for 4K streaming and you're wondering what the hell happened so that would be an amazing thing to see there's no other piece of software that challenges WordPress at that level Drupal kind of but no other web host is installing a WordPress rival an open source word press rival none there isn't any it's not easy yeah it doesn't exist it's definitely not easy yeah I want to I want to talk about the marketing before we wrap up and just get your thoughts uh I hope we would have talked a lot more about marketing through this episode but one of the things that came out of it was hey maybe we should be marketing WordPress better maybe there should be a Consortium uh of folks that you know put money in a pool and and advertise um or sponsor WordPress uh I've seen stuff like that failed miserably uh as somebody who grew up in the car industry my family owned car dealerships and that was the thing that regionally how General Motors dealerships used to advertise is you'd have like this percentage pool and as a smaller dealership in a smaller Market against like Boston dealerships like it was there was an imbalance we would put all this money in but then all the advertising was spent in a much more expensive Market uh in in Boston of course this was many many years ago um but it was the same kind of thing you'd have like 15 20 dealers in a room putting in this money and only two or three of them really getting um the benefit of a of a co-marketing budget like this and we'd be yelling at not me my father would be yelling at General Motors going this isn't working how are you going to back uh some of this expenses too which is what we kind of do with like automatic and word camps um so I've seen that you know really you know fail miserably from a more biased standpoint as a content creator I got my hands in the air if you're just listening we've been here all along we've been here all along you know asking for support and sponsorship dollars for marketing your WordPress products um you know whether that's through blog posts newsletter sponsors videos like maybe the question is should the content creators come together and form a coalition of here's all the stuff we offer finally work together instead of competitively and say hey WordPress product companies we've been here for a while support us and we can get this message out instead of you know coming up with your own ad dollars and figuring out like who's going to spend what you know uh what are your thoughts on on the marketing stuff from like a coalition standpoint wpca a WordPress content creators Association sounds pretty good oh you're one of those guys sounds pretty good um I mean obviously you have way more experience with this than I do but we've talked a lot and it's it's something that I'm trying to definitely focus on more of because I mean again I go back to the other thing I try to be like straight up and logical about it like you cannot do the level of stuff like creating content is hard no matter what people think about it or whatever like you have to be there if you're doing live streams there's that it's easier if you're good at it or if it comes naturally to you and that's and I understand as a you know maybe as WordPress or automatic or definitely as like a third party these these guys and GS like out here they're really good like developers they're really good at like understanding and solving problems it is very difficult different and difficult to do marketing as well for your product so you know if we're talking third party or even just in core I get it like it's a it's completely different skill set a lot of other things um you know just as as like programming would be or whatever so but I think that there I'm I'm hopeful with things like the YouTuber uh group that Ann has put together there that like I think it's a sign that there is a little bit more of understanding like we talked about earlier in the episode here about like what is happening why this is important why content creators and like the people in this space even like media in general like all of that is important um you know putting Jamie at the head of Wordpress we will see how that that goes ultimately but I think that at least on the surface definitely give it I'll I'll give it in some ways the the benefit of the doubt fully there that like Jamie is a Content guy 100% about that like he is he said it yesterday on the wp tonic like he thinks about that all the time um so I do think that that mindset is 100% necessary if you want to grow you know as a platform right like WordPress as a platform like that definitely needs to happen we could talk about the nuances of everything there obviously as relates to the open source Community everything but that aside if we're just talking about marketing I do think that that's necessary uh that said though I also think there's another angle where you definitely can't just have like a central like this is this would kind of go against that whole idea of almost like obviously WordPress isn't necessarily decentralized sort of in the definition of that term but like you can't just have it all coming from one place so to speak um but there is there's another angle of it I I'm contradicting here a little bit where like okay we need to have like a a unrelenting whatever like solid transparent message for everything like that I 100% agree with that but are you going to get a like a cohesive message together like is that possible you know what I mean like I don't I don't know if it is possible and that's why I feel that WordPress as a whole because of its nature and it's not like a corporation it's not a product I don't know if you can really have one specific angle that you that you attack from because it literally is different for everyone it it means something different for everyone that that builds it which is one of its greatest strengths and potentially greatest weaknesses from a a traditional marketing perspective and uh yeah I don't really have too many answers here I just think that maybe maybe one thing could be like a like a blend of voices coming from the core of it that's like oh you can use it like this this and this but the same time I go back to it and I'm contradicting myself again that I don't think that's what wordpress.org actually that I don't think that's the philosophy of wordpress.org and I and I said this the other day when I was watching Kevin's stream on it and I was thinking about it I was like at a certain point if if this is what the philosophy of wordpress.org is you kind of just need to either accept it or try to influence the change which we're kind of doing that sort of maybe I don't know but um I know there's a lot of stuff there but it's it's not an easy answer like there's no way to easily answer this stuff and if you're going to Market something you need to have what you're going to Market and the messaging but if you can't fully refine that messaging how do you Market it yeah so it's not an easy it's not an easy situation I don't have I ever shared the uh what would you do with the keys to the kingdom blog post um no I've only heard you say that like 15 times uh on a on a more serious note like I I I believe Miriam is calling for a sort of um not unofficial official sort of chat uh around contributor data on the marketing uh for the marketing stuff coming up at Work Camp us here's the only thing that that I would say is it cannot be and and probably technically cannot be but emotionally it cannot be my own opinion and I think technically cannot be part of the make marketing team because I think the make marketing team is officially just Frozen uh we'll get more insights to that from josea at the media Corps meeting and a couple weeks uh but technically like I don't think we can officially Corral around having another make marketing team um I don't think it will be supported by by josea and and Company because they're trying the media core experiment right now so I would urge us not to do that or try for that again because what what we're going to run into is the same exact limitations and frustrations with the marketing team for many years no access no data you don't work directly with a product team like some of the best marketing teams work directly with the product teams of a company uh how can you not work with a product team hand inand on a successful marketing team knowing what's coming knowing how the users want to use it working with users working with brand messaging working with data that is the the basis of a great marketing company um or great marketing team I should say and we're just going to fall victim to that again if we try to make the official make marketing team again having said that what what can and should be done with this Coalition is to get boots on the ground for exactly what you were saying and build up the build up their own set of data which I know is extremely difficult but this is why this is extremely difficult is boots on the ground for all those avatars that use WordPress okay so I don't know theoretically let's say it's Elementor um it's gravity forms it's Barn 2 plugins with their e-commerce plugins and whatever there's another company in there an agency so you have these four like types of people you have people who are page builder users you have people who are form users you have people who are e-commerce users in this Coalition the dollars should be spent either with WordPress media companies or boots on the ground getting those stories from the actual users so that you can identify how these people use WordPress because you're absolutely right you can't just have one marketing message for WordPress because it's [ \_\_ ] a million different things to a million different people so you got to build the marketing stories for the bloggers for the e-commerce people for the page for the web page builder people for the form Builders like how these different people implement this software that's where the time should be spent and then bubble that up into your little tactical advertisements that way because if you're trying to do it the makeway it's just I I I I think it's it would be destined to fail again for all the same reasons we've already seen it fail and if it's just like how do we promote WordPress at large that's also destined to fail because there's just so many different ways that people can use WordPress and inevitably you're going to alienate some's somebody's message whether it's the product company who's putting money into this marketing machine for you and they go hey man I'm a page builder you're not even talking to any you're not making any page builder ads they're going to freak out about that and you're going to forget the end user who is the page builder user who's going you keep telling me I can sell stuff on this WordPress website I don't care I just want to build my website you know so about that just one more thought on that I think that uh I am optimistic like overall in general I think there's a lot of really good things obviously still going and all the other stuff we talked about specifically on that point though I would say that I'm I'm I'm optimistic but I'm super skeptical just from what I've heard like specifically recently just because I don't I don't have long-term experience to this but like I don't I'm not convinced right now that you know the people that could make that call so to speak actually want that to to be the outward outward perspective of what WordPress is like I can't fully wrap my head around that yet like I I I don't I don't I don't believe it like I don't believe that you know like page Builders need to shine like like maybe e-commerce do an extent with like woocommerce but I just don't know if that's I I hope differently because that is the huge strength of WordPress but I'm not sure like and you can tell me has that ever been at the Forefront of like I'll make up a scenario Matt Mullen wig is like speaking or whatever and has he ever said I'm sure he said oh we got like millions of plugins and [ \_\_ ] like that or whatever but has he ever said like go use a page builder to build your website or like go use something else like it I feel like it's it's never the third party is mentioned I could be completely wrong but is has the third party ecosystem which is the vast majority of of those avatars that you're talking about in some ways like are is that ever brought up to that extent or is it always just like core Gutenberg very extensible which are all good points but they just don't when you're talking about like an actual Market strategy for those different avatars it's not going to hit everyone exactly just with those points any that make sense yeah no it it does um and that's why I say it can't be done you so this is that's a perfect reason why it can't be done through the official make channels right so if anyone's I guess this is just my opinion but if folks are thinking oh we'll make a new make Market team technically and emotionally I don't think it's going to happen it shouldn't it shouldn't happen because you're going to run into these same things um no it's never been done before again because marketing and the WordPress stuff has hasn't really ever been able to get off the ground I mean they just sat on the runway for years um I pulled up wordpress.com site because again I look for these canaries in the coal mine of of how we get these indicators I I know we want to talk to people all the time I you know have built a career on Theory craft this stuff and they've actually updated uh the wordpress.com site because I often look at the wordpress.com site to see what their marketing message is because you know there is no official marketing team and if one is to guess what automatic is thinking about marketing WordPress well you look at wordpress.com and how they're positioning um how they're positioning WordPress I used to really poke fun at wordpress.com homepage because it I I'll have to go to the archive I probably should do that so I'm not doing like a Joe Rogan and just saying [ \_\_ ] and it's not real um but it it used to just say something like WordPress your way and maybe kind of close to this like WordPress Without Limits that still means that the user Landing here knows what WordPress is right like they know but like if somebody's like I want to build a website you say go to wordpress.com and you go okay they go to wordpress. go WordPress Without Limits but I want to build a bakery website right that doesn't speak that doesn't speak to we just take a look at wix.com create a website Without Limits what no way it's hilarious who was there first I'm G to have to assume Wix was oh man what an amazing thing that we just discovered live even though we're just recording amazing um so WordPress Without Limits uh create a website without is 100% yeah I mean Square space.com I will cry I will cry designed to sell that's so weird right which is going that's that's that's square space they're going after they're going after Shopify they're going after Shopify they're going after the customer that's going to have the most value right they're not saying I don't care about these people want to build stupid website I want to I want a customer who's going to sell stuff because that's going to be my best my best customer um and then Shopify oops that's amazing making Commerce better for everyone wow you know and this is the thing like so right here and you any any marketer wor their salt knows this Shopify humans humans doing things right here when you look at Squarespace and Wix ads it's humans doing something it's never about hey look at this cool tool of dragging and dropping stuff it's humans doing stuff with our software that with the end result right I'm building my business here stories about my business this is that human factor that I'm urging this future coalition to go after um are you saying though that the Coalition is outside it's a it's completely external thing because it has to I think I think it's it does solve certain problems but obviously if we're talking money if we go back to the money thing like is that something that like automatic would be interested in like sponsoring extern I don't know how that structure actually ever works or or is that something that like like again we've we've had recent live streams like where does the is there budget for that or is that going to end up being like that the it makes money for itself somehow hypothetically number one this is just like a an idea that Miriam came up with uh or Miriam and the group came up with on that phone call who knows if this is actually going to come to fruition and if it is it's going to take you know months if not uh almost a year this is why I think the creators should we should come up was something more concrete to offer um because it it it does get like really murky uh this way where uh if you have you know Elementor putting in 5,000 bucks and somebody coming in putting in 500 bucks like whose message you know dominates that where I think if like three or four creators came together and said hey look we get this great idea for a series and everybody puts in XYZ amount of dollars and it's all just presented by Elementor Barn to plug gravity forms it's just way cleaner I think of a deal to do it that way than a Consortium trying to like figure out where to spend ad Revenue um but anyway I the point is is like just a little germ of an idea right now and I think if it is to expand it should live outside of the make WordPress marketing team because technically I don't think it's available and two uh I don't uh I think you'll just run up into the same limitations if it's part of the open source initiative many people aren't going to like that for those reasons but um I think that's the only way it's going to succeed yeah I mean I'd be interested in talking about more of that but we can kind of wrap up my only thing would be my two questions would be how does it look like actually I want to say like entity wise but like what would that be like it's totally different thing I mean I was kidding about the the you know the Players Association type thing but that kind of actually seems somewhat synonymous to an extent but um and but the other thing is like well how do you what do you message like what there's got to still be a message there CU that's the problem we're trying to solve yeah so like is it just like WordPress is great like you know cuz yeah well that's what I mean yeah that's what I mean like you it has to be boots on the ground building a strategy for the different avatars of Wordpress user which there might be like I don't know maybe six to a dozen yeah big ways it could be it could be for everyone like WordPress is for everyone like well there's definitely ways to poke holes in that you could say that but you can't stop there like you have to like say WordPress for everyone and then like have like you said like multiple different avatars that you could immediately say basically pick one pick one of these that defines you and will tell you exactly how you would not exactly how you would run WordPress but like how people like you would use WordPress yeah that's got to be how it is and I'm not sure why that's not happened I it's probably got to be just because it's more of like a la Fair like we're not going to we're not going to dive into this at all and tell you guys what to do like this is just this is what it is like just just it's really great just trust us go in there and just you know [ \_\_ ] around yeah but where do you put so that's the thing so where do you put that messaging so I have a video coming out that Brian cords and I recorded yesterday um which you should really enjoy we broke out a whole bunch so it'll be no this video will be live our video that we're recording right now will be live before the Brian episode so it's here's all the topics we covered open source GPL WordPress Beginnings Evolution Matt Mullen WG automatic automatic projects wordpress.com WP Cloud jetpack aism gravitar wordpress.org open verse five for the future Audrey Capital WP Tavern Jose De H champos C WordPress Foundation word camps and meetups core contributors GitHub versus SVN versus make versus slack woo themes and woo Commerce we went through every single one of those and broke it out um as far as we understand it and we still didn't touch on a lot of different areas uh for WordPress but we broke down like everything we knew about those different things and when you look at wordpress.org you're like once we started breaking it apart there's a [ \_\_ ] ton of stuff on wordpress.org tons of stuff tons I mean open verse five for the future all this stuff um you know your profiles your forums uh the photo directory this just like so much stuff on that site so if you have a marketing team where where's the centralized messaging that goes out for uh a open source contributing marketing team there isn't one right which is the challenge and if there is it's if you say it's the homepage of wordpress.org well that is running up a hill because you now have to ask the powers that be to make those changes and that is a very sensitive page for the overall project so is Matt going to just say yes to a bunch of volunteers that go hey got some great ideas for our homepage now probably not I don't blame them either you know so where do you put out that centralized messaging one idea so and look when you start bringing groups of people in and you start talking about money it's G to freaking make this thing go so slow because everyone's going to want to say rightfully so everyone's going to need to you know read the room figure out who's going to get what out of this deal how much is this going to cost who's going to Wrangle the the money how are we going to account for it one of the easiest things that people can do is come up with this uh solidified message like you're saying like maybe we can speak to why WordPress is great at the start and we adopt that into your five for the the things that already exist like when I evaluate a problem what structures already exist that we can leverage now are they useful yes or no and then if yes let's use the stuff we already have in place so we're not creating a new wheel like a marketing Coalition so you could say you know what there's a new thing we're coming up with for five for the future everybody writes a blog post about why WordPress is great or what WordPress means to me so does everyone buy into this how many of you out there buy into this 20 of you two of you a hundred of you if so one one day out of the month you all write a blog post about why WordPress is great that's how we're given back to the marketing wheel without money and without muddying the waters and it lives inside five for the future a structure that already exists next month write a blog post about why WordPress is great for e-commerce and we're all just pledging to amplifying and making WordPress Thrive that's what I got interesting um I mean it's an it's an idea I don't I don't know there's no money in this I'd want to hear it well honestly I mean I was kind of going that route but like I mean I don't I I don't know who we have to run this what we wouldd have to run that buy nothing for the five of the future that's the great thing so there's no it it's just a call call to action and say who wants to do it everybody pledge your time this month and then yeah okay maybe it takes somebody like you and me to just from a a promotional purpose like okay on this we're tracking all these blog posts here's all the cool people who contributed to this idea maybe that's something that we can do I mean I don't know haven't really thought about it just heard it but I I would I would question like not everything has to result in in profit Mark no that's not it you just got to you just got to make money somehow I mean because you have to live because you can't do everything for free so like how do you how what what but regardless of the money thing that's one concern where does that how does that tangibly move the needle well you have a lot more again you have to remember this is not you could also make the case if all of a sudden five companies came together raise $100,000 and put $100,000 out into advertising in content right like how how does that move the needle um I think that because this is a a lower barrier to entry like we're just asking everyone this month for the part of your five for the future of marketing WordPress to write about your you know the first time you ever use WordPress let's just I'm just using that as a topic idea but hey everyone that's involved with this to amp WordPress right about your first time experiencing WordPress and everybody and they get like 20 different stories out there just 20 more chances of impact next month it's let's talk about why WordPress is great for the e-commerce everybody writes one plug minimally like we're just we just minimally just setting the bar to say just at least do this like if we want to improve marketing before we get to consortiums and who's got the money and who gets what let's just start with that man let get this message out there and just see how that goes and see how many people are actually bought into this if it amplifies it amplifies if it doesn't you know it doesn't um it's just an easier takeoff in my opinion yeah I mean I personally would be much more willing to make a video than write well whatever I mean yeah but I mean I don't know that's an idea I would I'd love to get other opinions on that so if you guys are listening you let me know um but yeah I mean I don't know we we Workshop that we'll think maybe we'll run that off the flag pole or I don't know he's Mark zamansky you can find him at Mark zy. mj. he's got a bunch of websites launching he's got a YouTube channel his number one course is 100% free if you want to learn about Dynamic WordPress data right you go to Mark's YouTube channel again you can find The Links at mj. bio um we're always asking for money here at the wp minute if you want to support us and sponsor the work that we do uh talking about WordPress head on over to the wp.com support you can join the slack Channel where there's a whole bunch of people just over a hundred who talk about WordPress news and headlines you can join for as little as five bucks five bucks like you just spent an hour with us if you said boy that was pretty good I think they're doing some good stuff it's worth a coffee if that in this day and age here's five bucks you get to join uh the slack Channel I'd really love if you join for $79 a year to really show your vote of confidence uh and the value you get from the wp minute head on over to the wp.com support see you in the next episode my man you you you'll eventually see us in the next episode as soon as I find the end recording button which is, Will Marketing Save WordPress?, WordPress News Podcast - WP Minute, 01j6yj283pfnvhrqxw1ww5bfd6.