Calypso, 24 Hours Later

Automattic

The reaction to yesterday’s Calypso announcement has really blown me away.Here’s a tiny selection of of the coverage, analysis, and reactions to Calypso and the new WordPress.com:

“If you’re a regular user, you’ll notice a new look and feel. If you’re a code geek, you’ll notice something more remarkable below the surface: JavaScript instead of PHP.” Wired

“…I am personally extremely excited about this. Not only because the new UI is really nice and pleasant to use but also because this finally shows the modern side of WordPress, or at least starts to…” VersionPress

https://twitter.com/craigmod/status/669006749886615553

“What I love most about the whole project is the lessons it has for everyone regarding innovation.” Chris Lema

“So why did Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, go through this painful rewriting process? WordPress.com now feels and works like a modern web app. It’s back in the game against newcomers, such as Medium.” TechCrunch

“Calypso looks like a huge leap forward for a project that seemed to stagnate for many years.” The Next Web

“Clean, responsive, faster than ever… WordPress is such a great success story. I’m very happy I chose to use it over six years ago.” Mac Stories

https://twitter.com/chrismessina/status/668895604123152384

“Calypso is a great example of what’s possible with the WordPress REST API.” WP Tavern

“I think the new WordPress.com editor, and the corresponding WordPress.com app, are a great improvement to the writing experience… [T]he investment they’ve made is a smart one.” Post Status

https://twitter.com/ow/status/668850348321210368

“… the fastest and most streamlined WordPress experience so far.” 9 to 5 Mac

VentureBeat also reported on the launch yesterday, and there’s a longer interview with me up there today.

So far, we’ve seen articles in French, Indonesian, German, Spanish,  and Russian. Calypso is a trending repo on GitHub. The news was on top of TechMeme, and voted to the top of Product Hunt, and even Hacker News.

One of my favorite takes was from Om Malik, in “Some Thoughts on the New WordPress.com and Mac App”:

I view the shift to this newer, more flexible model as a way for WordPress.com to adapt to become a growing part of the open web. Blogging has always been mistaken for its containers, tools, the length of the posts or just a replacement for the rapid-fire publishing of old-fashioned news. In reality, blogging is essentially a philosophy built on the ethos of sharing.

Today sharing on the internet is a major social behavior: We share photos, links, videos, thoughts, opinions, news. Except instead of sharing on a blog, we do the sharing in increasingly proprietary and corporate silos: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Periscope and LinkedIn. You see, the blogging ethos is alive and well. However, the old blogging tools have to embrace change.

At the end of the day, it’s not about technology for technology’s sake, it’s about technology at the service of human voices. Embracing change to support the free, open web where everyone has a voice.

Finally, it was a weird coincidence we didn’t even notice, but the Calypso announcement was ten years to the day after we opened up WordPress.com.

7 thoughts on “Calypso, 24 Hours Later”

  1. I’ve been playing with this today, as well as watching the project on Github and commenting on issues, and am very glad to see that accessibility is already getting some love. So congratulations once again Matt and Automattic!

    Reply

    1. It can! You have to use Jetpack (right now, until the REST api in WordPress core matches the WordPress.com one) so that our (Automattic) servers can do some of the heavy lifting for you in processing the node.js, but it’s very possible 🙂

      Reply

  4. WordPress powers 25% of the worldwide web but it doesn’t offer a multilanguage set up. It would be a huge cultura milestone if finally this feature was included in the new core. WPML is not a serious solution.

    Reply

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