Category Archives: Asides

Interesting links.

Blogworld Expo Meetup

I’m in Las Vegas for the Blogworld Expo. As I announced from the stage this morning, there will be a WordPress Meetup before the official Blog Expo party. We’ll be meeting at “Lucky’s” in the Hard Rock Casino at 6:30, and I’ll have a limited supply of 20 or so t-shirts for the people who get there first. The guys from Mindtouch will also be there and are rumored to be buying a round. There was some confusion about the venue earlier, so please spread the word.

Marketplace Followup

Alex Jones has some good thoughts on the marketplace. As some stats, our themes page on .com got 2.4 million pageviews last month and someone previews a theme about once every 1.74 seconds. I can’t say how many people have purchased upgrades on .com, but even with our limited selection of products it’s a meaningful percentage, and that’s one of the reasons we think this idea has legs. It’s still impossible to know for certain, though, and I appreciate that our launch partners are taking a risk that they might create a theme and not sell a single one, and the whole thing might tank. If it goes well, though, I fully expect there to be thousands of themes in the system by this time next year, and the people in early will have a significant advantage, much like app developers did on Facebook.

Google Penalizing Paid Links

Now that Google is officially penalizing paid links, I’m glad the WordPress community took such a strong stand against them in themes. Countless blogs could have been penalized just for the theme they were using, not related to anything they did or did not do on their blog. It was a tough decision at the time, it probably drew more criticism and personal attacks against me than anything we’ve done before, but time has proved us right.