In the WordPress world, when we look back an 2016 I think we’ll remember it as the year that we awoke to the importance of marketing. WordPress has always grown organically through word of mouth and its passionate community, but the hundreds of millions being spent advertising against WP has started to have an impact, especially for folks only lightly familiar with us.
I’ve started to hear about a number of folks across many WordPress companies and industries working on this from different angles, some approaching it from an enterprise point of view and some from a consumer point of view. There’s an opportunity for learning from each other, almost like a mastermind group. As the survey says:
Never have there been more threats to the open web and WordPress. Over three hundred million dollars has been spent in 2016 advertising proprietary systems, and even more is happening in investment. No one company in the WP world is large enough to fight this, nor should anyone need to do it on their own. We’d like to bring together organizations that would like to contribute to growing WordPress. It will be a small group, and if you or your organization are interested in being a part please fill out the survey below.
By working together we can amplify our efforts to bring open source to a wider audience, and fulfill WordPress’ mission to truly democratize publishing.
If this sounds interesting to you, apply using this survey.
Wow 300 million! A drop in the bucket, especially considering the fact that WordPress is free and powers more than 24% of sites.
if the conversation has become about appearing better maybe its time to talk with fresh views about actually being better?
Nobody buys something that IS better, they buy something that LOOKS better.
Sounds good. Sign me up.
+1000 for that. The problem is even bigger than just the big guns, every new kid in town starts their marketing campaign by selling WordPress short 🙁 or talking about why it sucks. eCommerce industry is booming in PK and less than 5% or 10% of sites use WooCommerce, they apparently think that WordPress is somehow inherently insecure!
Uhm do not forget to point WordPress.blog correctly……
I love WordPress. It’s time WordPress grew up, it’s now coming into the teenage years and it’s time to start having fun. Lots of poor quality proprietary systems on the market at the moment which businesses and people need to realise how bad they really are for long term growth. The reality is that people still go with a website because “it looks pretty” which almost in all cases results in an in-secure or under performing website. WordPress hands down beats most platforms, by a long shot, it’s time we started shouting about it.
Awesome idea!!! WP has so much untapped love. 😉