Pepsi FAIL Again?! (Future Tribe Show)

On this episode of the Future Tribe show, Germaine and Kelsey talk about rebrands, refreshes, and acquisitions.

What we talk about

  • Pepsi has a new campaign that didn't hit the mark with it's audience
  • MTV is keeping relevant with a refreshed logo
  • Avast introduces a refreshed brand - and we love it!
  • Mailchimp is acquired for $12 billion!
  • Futuretheory.com.au is now futuretheory.co
  • The maker of MonsterInsights acquires the maker of Easy Digital downoads
  • LearnDash was acquired by Liquid Web
  • INPUT is the new podcast from the team behind Gravity Forms

Links from this episode

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated automatically and as such, may contain various spelling and syntax errors

Germaine: [00:00:00] Episode of the future tribe show I’m Germaine

Kelsey: and I’m Kelsey.

Germaine: We’ve got a very interesting show for you today as always. Starting off with Pepsi and Pepsi’s latest, missed attempt, I think at, at marketing, um, we’ve got the MTV logo refresh, which I’ve, I’ve sort of never seen them do that before. So that’s an interesting one, Avast antivirus, rebranding, um, and MailChimp getting acquired by a company that especially if in the U S you’d be very familiar with.

And, um, what other topics do we have today?

Kelsey: Um, so we’ll also be talking about a migration we’ve had from the future theory websites, a little announcement there to make, um, talking about the maker of monster insights acquiring, uh, another brand, [00:01:00] um, easy digital downloads. If anyone’s heard of that, um, we’ll be talking about learn dash, getting acquired as well, so a few acquisitions there, um, and finishing it off with, um, a new podcast from the team behind gravity forms

Germaine: Yeah so a lot of WordPress and acquisition, sort of talk on this week’s episode, but let’s roll the intro and get started.

All right. All right. All right. So the first one, Pepsi not hitting the mark with their target audience. Uh, what do you know about this one, Kelsey?

Kelsey: Yeah, so I came across this article the other day, um, basically Pepsi has done a slight rebrand. Um, I think it’s just temporary as a sort of marketing push at the moment.

Um, and they’ve got a new ad spot to go with it. Um, which I believe is being shown through socials. It’s not so much a TV [00:02:00] ad or it might be in the U S but at least for us in Australia, I think it’s more of a digital ad. Um, so you can see on the screen there for the people that are watching the stream, um, we’ve got that rebrand.

It’s very retro trying to go sort of that seventies, eighties kind of vibe. Um, bringing in it, but in the soldier, I guess, for a lot of the older generation, maybe that would be familiar with that kind of design. Um, the issue is that the sort of ad they’ve got, um, they’ve used Doja cat, and they’ve taken, uh, the song from Grease, um, and sort of transformed it into this modern take on it, I guess. Um, which is not, I don’t know. It’s interesting. So you go through tick-tock and you’re talking about a song from 1978 and trying to match up gen ed with a song for. You know, what does that now? Like 50, 40 years ago? That’s my maths is way off there.

Just a long time ago. Yeah. So it’s a bit of, I don’t know, it seems [00:03:00] to fallen flat because so many of the seemingly target audience, which is that gen Z audience is just not familiar with that song. Um, so all of a sudden you’ve just got this kind of weird mix of, yeah. I don’t know, music visuals. And just the wrong audience.

Like it just doesn’t match up.

Germaine: Yeah. It’s it might be, um, a case of needing a bit more refinement. Maybe someone came up with this concept and, and everyone thought, okay, this is, this is the way to go. Let’s do it. But quite, you know, didn’t execute on it, but this isn’t the first time Pepsi’s misstepped anyway, right?

Like there was a whole Kylie Jenner controversy. It’s not, it’s not a weird one for Pepsi. It makes you wonder if this is a strategy on Pepsi’s part to intentionally misstep every single time, because.

Kelsey: It’s definitely like the second tier [00:04:00] Cola brand. That’s really trying to compete with Coke and is just struggling because they just can’t seem to find their own mark, I guess.

Um, I mean, I personally love the rebrand. I think it looks really awesome. It’s kind of funky, um, they’re new flavors as well. I’m pretty sure.

Germaine: Soda shop and then cream soda Cola and black cherry Cola is the, in the screenshot here at least.

Kelsey: Yeah. Which I love. And I would say they’re quite retro flavors as well.

It’s the kind of thing you’d imagine in like a diner in the seventies, eighties. So I can understand that angle. I just think that. I don’t know. Maybe we’re not understanding who they’re trying to target or they’ve just really missed their target audience and what they’ll respond to. Um, cause they’ve hit the mark doja cat.

She’s huge on Tik TOK that all make sense, but just the song choice and the execution of the song and sort of not massacring a classic because they haven’t massacred it, but it’s also just not, it’s not even an improvement or anything. It’s just.

Germaine: Yeah, it just sort of exists. Um, [00:05:00] and you would imagine that that would have been a decent budget creating.

That sort of scene scape and creating the atmosphere around it. And, um, I mean, I don’t connect with Doja cat, I think definitely more of a tik tok. I, I, if you asked me one of what one of her songs are, I think she’s a, it’s a she, right? Yes. Yep. Uh, if you ask me one of, one of the songs I would not be able to, I

Kelsey: think you would have heard that she’s got a few big ones. Um, but she’s definitely like a tick tock. First. Yeah. Yeah. Which is a weird genre of artist to be .

Germaine: Well, yeah, it’s, it’s a whole new world of music and how music sort of interacts with me, social media as well. So, um, classic Pepsi though. Um, a bit of a misstep there, um, onto another. Classic brand. Um, I would say MTV made popular by MTV cribs amongst a lot of other things that [00:06:00] they they’re known for. Um, they’ve done a bit of a refresh again, we’re featuring brand new, uh, their website. Um, so awesome site to check out as, as always, uh, this refresh is very subtle and very much a refresh would

Kelsey: Is subtle the right word when you’re talking about bright yellow, red, and blue?

Germaine: so subtle in terms of the changes potentially, or perhaps not so subtle in terms of the colors that they’ve chosen to use though. Interestingly, I think this is a logo that hasn’t really changed over the years. They’ve they’ve refined it if only if only just,

Kelsey: um, they’ve sort of just kept the same basis and adjusted to the current trends, essentially. What’s that like black and white previously. I mean that those 80 colors of like orange light, blue and red, and now they’ve gone very like bright, which is very much a trend at the moment. I’ve been [00:07:00] saying just really bright and fun I guess.

Germaine: Yeah, yeah. Though. The black and or the single color version from ’09 um, to, until recently, um, to the new shift has only just dropped that 3d effect. Again, I think this makes it makes a logo that is very easy to scale down. Um, obviously social media is much bigger now than it was even in 2009.

And in 2009, Facebook would have been a year old. I think if I, if I’m getting my dates, correct. So, uh, they’ve simplified things further and made something that can be scaled down a lot more comfortably. Um, and then they’re applying that the bright colors again, across, um, The different media brands as well.

Um, I think it, it really works. Um, I love the simplification.

Kelsey: Yeah. Yeah. It looks really cool. Um, I was just sort of thinking from like a brand perspective, MTV, when it first started was obviously [00:08:00] music, television, like it said what it was, it was really clear. Um, and I think it’s like a bit of a running joke now that you can’t get music on MTV on the channel when you go and look at it. So I just wonder, I’m like, I love the rebrand and everything. I wonder if at any point they’ll consider like a full rebrand of like change of name or anything to align better with who they are now, because they’re not music television,

Germaine: but I guess it’s, it’s an acronym that, I mean, I’m just going to scroll up and work out. Have they ever referred to themselves in that way? And I’m guessing.

Kelsey: Yeah. I mean, they stick to MTV, which is good. Um, and like, I feel like it would be such a difficult rebrand because it’s such a well-known thing, but it’s just interesting

Germaine: Oh they’re iconic, like, don’t know what you’d be able to change to, to still keep that level of like, MTV is MTV.

You cannot, you just can’t get [00:09:00] past it. Right. That’s so big. They’re just, yeah.

Kelsey: At the same time though. I mean, from my perspective, when I think of MTV, I think of outdated because I just think that they got stuck in that like music, television space, and just haven’t been able to like adjust to the new sort of, way things are done and maybe this is sort of start of a push, or maybe I’m just not familiar enough with what they’ve been doing, because I just don’t, I don’t think I watch or pay attention to any MTV content myself.

Germaine: It’s potentially also because we’re in Australia, um, potentially because, you know, shows like catfish are quite big Um, and, but then in Australia I would argue that the streaming platforms have really got a, got a strong hold. So we’re not exposed to MTV as much, I think, um, MTV awards and things like that happen happening in the U S uh, there’s. There’s probably a lot that we don’t. Yeah. Get exposed to in [00:10:00] Australia. So this is maybe a case for the market being a bit, bit different, but if you look through and we’ll have all these links in the description of whatever platform you’re looking at this through, but if you look through, I think they’ve done a really nice application of color and shapes and patterns and, and it’s a good, a good example.

I think over the last few episodes we’ve talked about. A few missteps and a few sort of mishits, but this, this MTV refresh to me is quite a solid move on their part. And they’ve sort of hit the nail on the head. I would, I would say

Kelsey: Yeah, I agree. I really like it.

Germaine: Um, moving on from one refresh to more of a rebrand they’ve um, have you, have you used Avast antivirus ever, or do you know of them?

Kelsey: I’m going to say yes. I’m not confident on it, but I’m sure at some point my dad would have installed that kind of thing on my laptops through the years. [00:11:00]

Germaine: Well, they’ve gone ahead and changed, uh, that logo mark, um, as well as the, the, for the whole logo I wanted to show this as an example of how you can sort of change. But then I think condense down the principles of a logo to something even more, uh, like a stronger, more distilled.

Um, to me, the shift from a bit of a, I don’t know what it was meant to be. Does it look a bit like a virus to you? The, the old logo, a with the.

Kelsey: Um, I kind of just see a blob not very creative but yeah.

Germaine: So saying that, you know, they’ve shifted to something even less creative, um, which is a circle, but what I like about it is that it’s a shape, but you know, it is also somewhat abstract [00:12:00] A, um, and to me as a whole sort of representation of an antivirus software, it looks a lot more serious. It looks a lot more professional and established, um, where the old one looks a bit more, a bit too playful. Like I wouldn’t necessarily want something so playful, uh, installed on my system on my computer when I’m talking about my security and the security of potentially my loved ones and the information and financial information.

Um, how does it sit with you?

Kelsey: Yeah, I like it. Um, I think that I see two shapes in this that’s the circle and a triangle, and those are two shapes. I’d probably consider quite strong. I mean, triangles are apparently like the strongest kind of shape really. And when it comes to circle, this is probably a bit of a like English class stretch kind of thing here.

But like, I’m kind of thinking of like a turret or like a fort sort of thing. So like first-line defense strength in that sense again, that’s probably an English [00:13:00] stretch of like, the apple is red, so it means this, but yeah, I like it. I think it’s fresh. Um, it’s really clean. It does feel strong and kind of more trustworthy, I think, than the old one as well.

And I like that they’ve gone to a darker black, rather than the gray that they had previously. Because again, I think it just adds that extra bit of strength to the name.

Germaine: Yeah, certainly. And I think they’ve also been able to find a shape in terms of the aid that is fairly unique. Like, I haven’t really, it doesn’t sort of make me look at it and go, oh, I’ve seen this before.

I’ve seen it general, like, you know, maybe 50% of the concept here in that it’s sort of like, uh, like the same shape, sort of changing in size and scaling, but, um, they’ve still been able to find. Somewhat unique execution of it. Um, and ultimately, you know, going on this, the thing that I go on about hop on about the, the logo as a, as a, [00:14:00] uh, an identifier, rather than a descriptor, this really hits that nail on the head.

Um, did I tell you about how I had this whole argument with someone in, in a Facebook group about logos, as I identifiers versus descriptors?

Kelsey: You might’ve mentioned, but give me a refresher.

Germaine: Well, the, the Avast example is probably the best one and even M MTV to an extent. Um, but basically I try and push this to people that logos should be identifiers in that logos should be designed to be unique and ownable for you.

And by that, I mean, think of like the McDonald’s M arch or the Nike tick. Um, rather than trying to describe what you do. It’s something that I think a new or fresh graphic designers and logo designers do in that, you know, they’re, they’re doing a logo for a [00:15:00] chicken shop, so they try and have a chicken in there, um, where you don’t really see a chicken in the KFC logo.

Uh, and they think. That makes for a logo that is really representative of the company that they’re designing the logo for. Whereas I would argue, and I’m interested to hear your thoughts on this, a logo instead should be something that makes you recognizable for yourself. So if you’re Avast, someone should be able to see it and say, oh, that’s a vast versus someone looking at it and thinking to themselves, oh, that’s a, that’s an antivirus.

And this, it doesn’t necessarily apply to every single industry. I think if you, uh, say I like a, um, a glass like a windscreen shop, um, I think in that case, if you do auto glass, it doesn’t hurt to have a more, or a glass sort of representation in your logo. Um, just because. [00:16:00] That’s that’s sort of a market that people sort of use once or twice in their lifetime. I would think.

Kelsey: You just want to be able to identify it quickly and know what it is rather than like a long-term investment in a brand.

Germaine: Yeah. Because people aren’t going to, you would think, I mean, I’ve replaced a windscreen or windshield once in, in my years of owning car so far. Um, have you ever replaced your windscreen?

Kelsey: Never

Germaine: So you’re not really trying to build a, you know, a good rapport with a auto glass provider. I would think, um, unless you’re into just making friends in all the right places. Absolutely. But, but what do you think about that sort of comment about logos as identifiers versus descriptors?

Kelsey: Yeah, I think it helps to, um, you know, if you treat a logo as an identifier, it allows you to put a brand to the logo and apply your own sort of, um, [00:17:00] values and whatever else you want to sort of put to it and make it your own.

Um, which I think Avast have done. Like they, haven’t tried to put like a security lock or shield or which is quite a common thing. Um, so I think they’ve done well to stick to that. Um, and I do also like that they’ve kept the orange to maintain what they built up from the previous logo. So it’s similar enough. It’s fresh. It’s new without being a full, complete rebrand.

Germaine: So you’re not throwing any well, you’re not throwing everything away. You’re bringing some things across.

Kelsey: Exactly. Yeah. I really like it.

Germaine: Good. Awesome. Well, jumping from a talk about logos to getting into more of the acquisitions that we mentioned, um, at the start of the episode, the first one is Mailchimp being acquired for Intuit. I don’t think anyone would have guessed that MailChimp would have been bought for $12 billion. Um, geez, [00:18:00] that’s crazy. I’ve seen people say, you know, that they didn’t realize, um, that MailChimp was so big, uh, that they didn’t realize that MailChimp had that many customers. Um, but then again, Intuit’s known for acquiring a lot of companies.

Have you heard of intuit

Kelsey: No. I’ve got to say, when it comes to acquisition stuff, I am very unfamiliar with most of these kinds of companies. Um, so I’m going to need you to walk me through a lot of them.

Germaine: Well, intuit is huge. The only reason I’m aware of Intuit is because they, um, they either developed or, I mean, they definitely own QuickBooks, which is a, um, like a Xero competitor.

Um, so it’s not necessarily something that, um, the average person. Comes across, um, in terms of Intuit as a company, they’re more sort of B2B focused. Um, they Intuit also owns a mint.com, which is quite big in the U S I’ve just, um, looked them up on, uh, [00:19:00] Wikipedia and there’s oh, about two screens worth of. Uh, items of acquisitions as far as Intuit is concerned.

So, um, yeah, they’ve broken it down by decades. That’s how, that’s how significant, uh they’ve. Yeah. In, in, in the last two years, they’ve acquired three companies. Um, last year they acquired a company called credit karma $7.1 billion. So I’ve never heard of them, but, um, these guys. Make a lot of money that they do revenue of around 6.7, 6.8 billion us dollars every year.

So they’re quite big. Um, eh, they have got over 10,000 employees. Um, the reason I wanted to bring it up is because, uh, MailChimp to you, Kelsey, what does it mean? What do you, what do you remember MailChimp like is in terms of what they do and what they are. [00:20:00]

Kelsey: The newsletters that show up in my inbox from various e-commerce stores that I signed up to for 10% discount and forgot about I never bought from that’s pretty much MailChimp for me.

Um, I mean, I’ve used it myself for lots of different newsletters, but yeah, that’s sort of my knowledge. Yeah.

Germaine: Yeah. See a lot of people don’t realize that MailChimp has to become more of a marketing platform these days, rather than just a newsletter service. So there’s automations there’s. I think you can even build your own websites using MailChimp.

Definitely. You can do landing pages. So, um, I think MailChimp’s been loved. I mean, I used to love, I, I, we still got clients who use MailChimp, uh, but I think this news is interesting in that, Intuit spent $12 billion on acquiring MailChimp. They’re going to want to make some of that money back as soon as possible.

And MailChimp’s over the years really tightened what they used to do as, as sort of free service. [00:21:00] Um, they’ve tightened it further and further, and this is more of a heads up that if you’re not already paying for MailChimp, there might be an increased chance of you needing to pay for MailChimp. Now. I can’t really suggest an alternative because MailChimp is really quite good.

We’ve got clients who use MailChimp to send, you know, 30,000 emails a day, um, extremely reliable. Um, so there’s, there’s not other options necessarily, but if you’re concerned about it, something to keep an eye out for, because, um, you might need to start paying for features that used to be free. Hmm.

Kelsey: That’s unfortunate kind of hope it goes the other way. Maybe they’ll allow more free features from a larger company that owns them now

Germaine: potentially maybe

Kelsey: Resources across the different companies

Germaine: and to, I guess, maybe get more customers signed up. Um, yeah, some something [00:22:00] I guess look out for, I mean, Canva has sort of done that. Canva’s worth four times what MailChimp’s worth. Yeah, I would argue that MailChimp’s just as well known as Canva.

Kelsey: Yeah. And I think both companies they’ve done a really good job of offering enough free tier services that you get hooked and you go, this is great. This is worth the investment and convince them that way rather than sort of going money first.

So I kind of hope that they’ll continue with that kind of model and be able to justify why people should pay for it in that sense.

Germaine: Yeah, just, just to wait and see, this is this, isn’t the first talk of acquisitions. Uh, this episode, we’ve got another couple of things to talk about. So, um, Before we jump into those.

Let’s talk about what we did a few days ago this week at Futuretheory very, um, in migrating from futuretheory.com.au to futuretheory.co. Now. I wanted to bring this up [00:23:00] because when you’re deciding on a domain name. I think a lot of people struggle to find short domain names for the names that they come up with.

Um, have you ever tried to register a domain name, Kelsey. And how has that experience for you in terms of finding an available domain name?

Kelsey: Um, I haven’t done it for myself, but we’ve sort of done it for a few clients that have, um, we thought were unique names, I guess, but obviously in the world of the internet there’s domains taken everywhere.

Um, that was quite challenging because then you start having to put like hyphens or. I don’t even know what else. Just like spelling it differently out of adding other words or just making it really long and inconvenient. Haven’t loved that side of it.

Germaine: Yeah. So for us, we we’ve been trying to acquire futuretheory.com for a long, long time. And it’s just, we’re just not hearing back from the current company that, um, has it, and doesn’t really use it. But what we wanted to do was to change [00:24:00] our so .com.au is fantastic. We will continue to serve our local Australian customers, um, and clients. Um, but we also wanted to look at how we can help more people and reach more people with the information that we have on the website.

Uh, we, we get a lot of visits every day, every month onto the website. Um, and we’ve been looking at sort of getting information on the website that helps as many people as possible while also continuing to help, uh, Australian customers. Um, so that’s where we’ve shifted from .com.au to .co. Still too early to know whether that’s going to have a negative effect on our search engine optimization.

We’ve done everything that we can when we shift from a domain, um, for anyone who’s sort of looking into it, it’s basically you want to do 3 0 1 redirects, which sounds a bit more technical than, than the average person would want to deal with. But, [00:25:00] uh, it is quite important to maintain the sort of nice SEO positioning and the, the nice, uh, image that you’ve built up for yourself in Google’s eyes.

So we’ve shifted to a .co we’re going to release a lot more information in the, in the coming weeks and the coming months. Uh, but I wanted to mention it more as a, you know, we’ve shifted, and so keep, keep that in mind now, sort of, um, and also, I guess mention it for anyone who’s looking to shift your domain name. Um, there is a good and correct way to do it, and there are definitely way wrong ways to do it in ways to mess it up. So if you’re looking for help reach out to us or, uh, join the Future Tribe, Facebook, which is going to be linked below, um, and we’d love to help you in there as well. Um, did you have anything else to add to that, Kelsey?

Kelsey: [00:26:00] Uh, no, I think you’ve got it all. Um, I mean, definitely come join the future trap group. Uh, you can ask any questions you’ve got there. It’s sort of our community to, I mean, community source information and for us to be able to talk with people directly and sort of offer that advice in a more free sort of setting.

Germaine: Definitely, definitely. Um, so on to the next acquisition news, um, when you read it out, I could tell that you weren’t completely aware of monster insights and easy to fill downloads, but these guys are huge in the WordPress plugin, WordPress space, um, monster insights, best known for their Google plugin that allows you to integrate, um, Google analytics onto your website and, monitor Google analytics on your WordPress site directly within the dashboard and easy digital downloads is a very popular as the name suggests digital downloads plugin, but the companies behind [00:27:00] them are called Awesome Motive and Sandhills development. These guys actually huge in the WordPress space. So Awesome Motive has opt-in monster, WP forms, monster insights, and other WordPress plugins that if you’re in the WordPress world, you’d be very, very aware of. Um, and then Sandhills development includes easy to do downloads affiliate, WP, WP Simple Pay, um, there are a lot of plugins again there. So, this is more of the consolidation that we’ve been talking about in the podcast space, in the WordPress space.

I, I, I personally think it’s a bit of a pity because a lot of these companies build up a lot of Goodwill and, um, a lot of that sort of small business, um, customer service and community around them. And then they get acquired by a bigger company. Do you, do you have a lot of experience, Kelsey, sort of dealing with [00:28:00] smaller companies that are fantastic. And then they might get acquired and, you know, things start to fall off a little bit.

Kelsey: Um, I’ve got to say nothing really comes to mind. I’m trying to think of like what kind of companies I’ve interacted with. Like. Nothing’s really coming to mind.

Germaine: Well, that’s, that’s a good example, I guess, of the fact that maybe won’t be a huge thing for you. Maybe you won’t even realize like ideally in an ideal world, when a company gets acquired by another, the customers won’t even notice. Um, so potentially, maybe this is to say that I am just being, um, a bit, bit more pedantic about something that would affect everyone else. Um, but then looking at it from, from my perspective, which is more of a development WordPress management point of view, we’ve got clients using plugins from both sides of the, of the camp. Um, it’ll be interesting to see what they [00:29:00] do with it. Um, and, uh, there’s another acquisition that, that we also mentioned, which is, um, learn dash being acquired and LearnDash is a very popular WordPress LMS or learning management system. And they’ve been acquired by. Stella WP, who is actually owned by liquid web, which is again a big company. Um, and again, more consolidation. So the guys behind, um, or the team behind Stella WP owns ithemes the events, calendar restrict content pro all these used to be, or majority of them used to be separate products that are now being acquired and acquired and acquired and personally from my side of the, of the, the, um, uh, debate, I don’t like it. I love being able to talk to the [00:30:00] developer or a small team of 10 people. Um, whereas now we’re just becoming one of the, one of the numbers. Um, but then again, it doesn’t sound like you’re affected too much by this sort of thing.

Kelsey: I think I probably come from the opposite direction. Um, I can understand your concern with that happening, but I kind of feel like when it comes to acquisitions yes, it can sort of fall off that small business kind of style of doing things. But I think it can also open up, um, that company to be able to do more and be able to help more people or make their services more streamlined, have better customer service things. You know, if you’ve just got one developer who’s talking to the customer, there’s only so many people that can talk to. And that’s great when you’re at the early stages of that business. But when it gets to a point where you’ve got thousands and thousands of customers, that one developer, I can’t talk to all of them and you need to bring in that sort of customer service team, which I think these [00:31:00] acquisitions allow to happen in a proven way with people that sort of know what they’re doing. It’s not just trial and error again and again, for all these different small businesses. Um, so I think it just opens up a lot more capability with these acquisitions and probably streamlines better.

Germaine: What do you think though? It does in a world where like WordPress was developed as an op-, well it’s still open source is built by the community and we’re getting bigger and bigger you know, companies having roles to play within an open source community. Again, this is coming from like you you’re looking at it more from the consumer side, um, then, then I would be looking at it. So I’m interested to hear your thoughts on, on, on that side. Like we’ve got this very community focused product and platform that is becoming increasingly corporatized.

Kelsey: Mm so I’m not as familiar myself with open source platforms, [00:32:00] from the perspective of somebody who would, I guess, be contributing over like really in that community. Um, so sort of hard to comment on how that impacts it. Cause again, I sort of, I am looking from that corporate perspective where I say the positives of it being corporatized, but I can understand that the people who are much more invested in open source sort of stuff and, being really involved in that community would not be happy about it because I guess they would lose, well, they’d be competing with bigger people for one of bigger companies, bigger groups. Um, and I guess it does lose that sort of community built feel when you’ve got, all of a sudden, this investment from all these big companies. So I can understand that.

Germaine: Yeah. You’ve spoken to the benefits of, um, having more resources. And I think, you know, that that’s, that’s very true. So, um, maybe my concern also is coming from the angle of like corporations now are creating a lot of [00:33:00] power in a world where. You know, the open source community, the whole point of open source is that there is, is power sort of democratized across multiple individuals and everything sort of, you know, a team effort, um, and going more corporate obviously takes away from that.

But we’ll see what happens. WordPress is getting bigger and bigger every year. Um, and despite, you know, all these other. Uh, website building solutions like Wix, Squarespace, et cetera, et cetera. WordPress press continues to be really, really strong and going from strength to strength. So, um, maybe, maybe WordPress is just going to become more corporatized as we go.

And that doesn’t necessarily mean that the open source community gets smaller. Um, hopefully, and it just means that, you know, on top of the open source side of things, there’s corporations sort of beating the same drum and pushing things forward as well, which sounds like, uh, that’s that’s, [00:34:00] that’s a good thing I think.

Kelsey: Yeah. I mean, it kind of feels like it’s just capitalism in early form, isn’t it? Because you start off with open source sort of stuff, where you’ve got a couple of contributors and then they become more popular and all of a sudden they have to bring on another person to help them out with the development. All of a sudden you’ve got all these mini corporations and things which get taken up as just an, a builds. So it just, to me just seems like classic capitalism situation and you can’t really do too much about it when that’s the whole structure of. Like, I sounds like open source will end up being eventually.

Germaine: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe, maybe, maybe that’s just what it is. And I’ve just got to, I was just going to get on board.

Kelsey: It’s kinda sad, but I just, I mean, that just seems like, yeah. How capitalism starts off.

Germaine: Well, I’ll ultimately anyway, if, if these products continue to serve their customers, um, and don’t go back and sort of hurt or damage, previous customers, um I think then it’s it’s a good outcome. [00:35:00] So, um, Yeah, I think, I think we’ll just wait and see. It’s it’s good to know. Good to be aware of all the wait and see. Um, and then the last one is, uh, input, which is a new podcast slash video cast by the team behind gravity forms. A very, very popular.

WordPress plugin again. So a lot of WordPress news this week, um, but these guys they’ve announced, uh, that they’re releasing a video and a podcast called input that tells the stories of people who are doing something creative, sharing the ins and outs of how they industries work and providing insight for WordPress’s growing community of problem solvers.

So I wanted to bring this up because. Um, they’re sort of doing something similar to what we’re trying to do, um, and we’re doing, uh, but it’s the team behind gravity forms really popular plugin. Again, you know, be a team that keeps on growing and, uh, a product that is very popular. So I wanted to get the word out [00:36:00] there on their behalf on this episode.

Kelsey: Nice. I have to go have a listen after this.

Germaine: Yeah, they’ve just also mentioned that there’s going to be a new gravity forums website coming soon as well. And again, the team behind a rocket genius, who are the guys who built gravity forms is, is fantastic. So go, go check it out. We’ll include all the links to everything that we talked about in this episode, in the description.

Uh, was there anything else we needed to mention before we call it?

Uh, Well, that is

everything awesome. Well, just before we roll the outro, uh, thanks for listening to this episode. Um, we’ll be back with you with more news next week. Everything to do with design marketing, WordPress development. So catch you then.[00:37:00]