ROBERT JACOBI

Industry Analyst & Strategist

Hindsight is 2020: October – December

Glad you made it to the final quarter review! Hindsight is 2020: January – March kicked us off and followed with April through June and July through September. Let’s look at the final quarter of 2020’s defining and popular posts from October through November and see how they hold up.

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October

My post on thoughts about a WordPress IPO was easily the most popular post of the first ten months of the year. Great feedback from the audience, and really ongoing feedback. The first IPO in the WordPress space is coming, we all should be aware of what the ramifications might be.

If you read the third quarter update, you’ll have seen that JAMstack as a platform was getting a lot of discussion and ink (do we still use ink for anything?). The JAMmed Up post had some updates and kept getting more popular but even more amazing was a one-on-one interview with Netlify CEO and founder Mathias Biilmann.

November

October was a breakout month for the newsletter, the site, and social media. October alone accounted for as much traffic as the first quarter, well November decided to exceed October and the breakout post was about a WordPress Clarification to All Media. This was all about a pet peeve of mine regarding the greater media conflating WordPress the open source project, with WordPress.com an Automattic product.

And if that wasn’t enough, commentary regarding the EIG acquisition (Bluehost), was huge! This is still a fascinating purpose and I’m really curious if EIG will be looking to innovate after this acquisition or is this all about just finding ways to squeeze out some dollars.

December

Well we made it to the end of the year! We got Matt Mullenweg’s State of the Word, and just as great I was able to put on with Big Orange Heart, Steak of the Word, a watch party the generated contributions to a very worth charity.

It was actually a surprisingly busy month for content, we had Salesforce acquiring Slack, we had WooCommerce acquiring MailPoet, and three lists for hosts, podcasts, and newsletters.

Final Thoughts

For everyone 2020 was a year of upheaval, turmoil, and change. It was challenging in so many ways that I would never have predicted 12 months ago. I’m glad for the health and safety of my peers, friends, and family. I truly wish for a happy, successful and better 2021 for everyone!

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