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Hot Off The Press. WordPress, Its Business Model And Future pt. 1

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Scott Berkun stood at the podium and looked off to the side and stammered. It was subtle but clear, the question that was just asked had him baffled. “I don’t really know how to answer that,” he said. He quickly regained his composure, however, when he gathered his thoughts.

“Most companies don’t scale well. Most companies fail. Most companies go out of business in a year. You guys happen to work for one that scaled really well. That’s abnormal. That’s unusual. The same challenges that any organization has to grow and scale would be big challenges for any company. It’s not clear yet how remote work will factor into that. That’s one of the best answers I can give.”

Berkun was speaking to a group of developers at Google when he gave this reply. Someone had just inquired about WordPress’ fresh yet peculiar way that it manages its company and the people that work for it. It’s not that Berkun was ill-prepared or negligent in his answer, it’s just that he was being honest. It is truly unknown what the impact of WordPress’ business practices will have on its employee’s work ethic in the future. It’s also unknown how WordPress will affect the web as a whole.

WordPress, Conventionally Unconventional

Berkun was a manager at WordPress.com for one year. In that time he tried to reinvent what it meant to be an administrator in a world that was quickly redefining the employee/employer dynamic. WordPress doesn’t run like any other company in that their biggest focus is remote work. Automattic, the company that owns WordPress, has an office, but the greater part of the employees work out in the world in whatever place they are most comfortable with.

They eschew traditional means of communications as well. That means out with email. What they do instead is rely on IRC, Skype and blogs to communicate and exchange ideas. Occasionally they use Google Hangouts if they want to speak face-to-face and every few months a team will meet at a location around the world to re calibrate dynamics, bond and get some serious work accomplished.

This runs surprisingly well and it actually makes a whole lot of sense. WordPress’ communication style is not about what’s conventional, it’s all about what is live, immediate and, most importantly, open. The IRCs are ways that team members can reach out to the company as a whole for support and get it in real time. Real time communication happens on Skype calls as well, where people can chat about progress or what problems that may be  encountered. But what makes them truly different is their reliance on blogs. However, this should not come as a surprise once you remember that WordPress is a blogging platform after all.

Team members and their managers keep detailed notes of conversations and then blog about it for future reference. This allows exchanges to be transparent and archivable. People can see what’s going on with the company at all times and team members know exactly who is doing what within its ranks. Imagine if everyone you worked with kept a blog about what they did that day and who they interacted with? A blog that anyone could read. How would that change your perception of that company? How would that change how work is done within it?

Work at WordPress

The natural progression of WordPress’ non-traditional mentality filters down into how they view the people that work for the them. From before the interview you are seen as an adult who can make rational decisions for yourself. The hiring process is simple. After an interview you’re given employment on a trial basis. That means you are given a small project as well as financial compensation for it. What you’re not given is required work hours, a long list of rules or a daily task list. It’s assumed that you can manage yourself and determine how best to accomplish the task. The trial period isn’t looking for the superstars so much as a way to see how much you can learn, adapt and if you will be a fit for the company.

It’s not that unconventional, but in a world of corporate culture and massive companies it’s a thing that doesn’t happen that much. Despite being a large part of the web that’s ever growing, WordPress still is a considerably small company in relation to other big players of the web. That is why that question of “how does it scale” was so important. How will WordPress change as it grows bigger is a very important thing to consider as many eyes are on WordPress right now.

The Growth of WordPress

WordPress is proving to be a very popular and usable platform for not only blogging but web development as a whole. It’s very common now for entire websites to be designed within its parameters. It’s very popular for many reasons, namely that a website can be delivered to a company and they can be in charge of content changes without relying on a web developer to make them. This is both saves time and money and makes a company look involved and active.

Because of this many are curious about how an increased WordPress presence will affect the current state of the web. What will it do for developers? Will it make their jobs easier or harder? There are many problems that are introduced such as new techniques developers will have to learn to have successful SEO. These will all take time as we accommodate this new state of the web.

WordPress straddles the line between old and new business models and introduces technology that the tech industry will have to figure out best practices for. They also straddle the line between app and app development platform. While it’s true that WordPress has a rich set of APIs where developers can design things like widgets and plugins, not everyone considers WordPress a true development platform in the same way as a company like Facebook.

Some people simply don’t consider blogging software a candidate for a legitimate software. While I disagree, I think it’s important to consider the difference and the implications of labeling one over the other. The future trend leads to a wider market where WordPress can offer more features to individuals. This will only create markets where developers can find opportunities to accommodate.

Although the future of WordPress is not quite known, it’s future is bright. It has become a solid and trusted platform for web content in a relatively short amount of time. The outside thinking of Matt Mullenweg, original founder, and others have made a product that is both popular with web users of all types. They’ve done it with keen business practices through a staff that is invigorated and fresh with ideas. It will be very interesting where WordPress goes from here.


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