Tara over at HorsePigCow just converted to Wordpress. First of all, congrats and great call, but that’s not the point of this post. The point is Tara couldn’t have done it without the help of a HorsePigCow fan and Wordpress evangelist techie named Adam who reached out to Tara through her blog. Tara was so satisfied with Adam’s work that she goes on to ask:
Previous to a week and a half ago, I hadn’t ever met Adam. Now, I would recommend his work to anyone.
Is this the new job interview? The new resume? The new referral system? Even the new reputation system?
The work Adam did for Tara says a lot about the kind of person he is. That’s certainly the kind of “just do it” attitude I would want a product manager at any of the Union Square Ventures portfolio companies to have.
But, this occurrence of generosity says even more about Wordpress. They have created a product so compelling that their users become evangelists and take the time to help others get going. I had the same experience when i was migrating from Wordpress.com to my own hosted Wordpress install; the Wordpress community and forums were invaluable in the migration process.
The users are so enthralled with Wordpress that they do customer support for Wordpress. That’s powerful! And, it’s marketing that no amount of money can purchase in a media buy. It’s marketing that can only be created an authentic commitment to building a truly great product.
Absolutely. It’s the growing gift economy that Austin Hill talks about…pretty amazing what happens. One company gives a great product into the wild…opens up the code so that people can extend it…more and more people add to the product, inspiring more people to go out and give other things that they can, like Adam, who gives to me, then I feel even more giving than usual and the chain of events go on.
I mean, it sounds so utopic hippie 2.0, but geez, it feels good to ‘pay it forward’ (a term that Adam used when he emailed me). It just seems to keep going.
That cheesy movie, Pay It Forward, assumed that random acts of kindness would be paid forward with completely unreleated acts of kindness. However, in the web, that’s not the case. Acts of kindness are paid forward, but all the acts revolve around a single thread of technology (in this case, Wordpress).
Greasemonkey is another great example. When Greasemonkey released, users didn’t feel compelled to go volenteer at their local hospital; they felt compelled to write awesome, free Greasemonkey scripts for all to enjoy.
Makes perfect sense too. Very intuitive behavior.