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Google expands store ratings in search results to Australia, Canada, India, and UK.
Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg announced a new Executive Director for WordPress.org after the previous director’s resignation. Social media reactions, while generally positive, were notably subdued, with many comments focused on the recent WordPress controversy.
Mullenweg announced that Mary Hubbard, was hired as the new Executive Director. Hubbard was formerly the Chief Product Officer for WordPress.com from 2020 and will begin her new position on October 21st. She recently resigned as the Head of TikTok Americas, Governance and Experience.
The Executive Director position at WordPress.org opened up after the resignation of 8.4% of Automattic employees, including the previous Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Mullenweg offered employees who wished to leave $30,000 or the equivalent of six months pay, whichever was higher. The severance package was offered after the recent issues between Automattic, Mullenweg and WP Engine (WPE) which resulted in WPE filing a federal lawsuit against Mullenweg and Automattic, alleging attempted extortion.
A post in the popular Dynamic WordPress Facebook Group generated 21 responses within seven hours, with most of the comments a discussion about the recent drama and the Mullenweg’s ownership of WordPress.org and other similar topics (view the discussion here, must join the private group to view).
The response to the official WordPress.org announcement on X was muted, with about equal amounts of people posting welcomes as those who were taking the opportunity to post their displeasure and opinions about recent events.
Seven hours after posting the announcement there were only 15 responses, 21 retweets, and 117 likes.
Welcome!
— Robert Jacobi (@RobertJacobi) October 8, 2024
Welcome Mary!
— Michael Potter (@Michael_6of7) October 8, 2024
What does the E.D. do for https://t.co/sbi8NmJkOL? Is https://t.co/sbi8NmJkOL part of the Foundation? Part of Automattic? Something else? Unlike WPEngine, the differences between these organizations, their ownership, and governance are incredibly confusing.
— Jeff Severson (@jeffseverson) October 8, 2024
“Our”? I thought Matt owns this establishment, with foundation having nothing to do with https://t.co/Duw3H6Qbg3. 🤨🤷
— Viktor Nagornyy (@V1ktor) October 8, 2024
Fire @photomatt
— Shay Grafdelver (@shaygrafdelver) October 8, 2024
Read the official announcement on WordPress.org
Featured Image by Shutterstock/michaelheim
Siteimprove announced the acquisition of MarketMuse, creating a comprehensive SaaS solution for content, accessibility, and SEO. This unifies vital marketing processes, benefiting customers of both organizations with a single, integrated platform.
MarketMuse is a leading AI content planning software that helps users research, plan and execute a scaled content strategy. MarketMuse enables users to analyze their content to understand if it adequately covers a topic and can scale up to analyze the entire overall topic and create content briefs that take the guesswork out of creating a content calendar, enabling an organization to be able to consistently publish high quality authoritative content.
Siteimprove is a platform for analyzing content for SEO and accessibility as well as continuous site monitoring for issues.
MarketMuse’s Jeff Coyle wrote:
“I’m excited to announce that MarketMuse has entered a definitive agreement to be acquired by Siteimprove, one of the biggest players in martech!
Siteimprove’s known far and wide for assembling accessibility, digital governance, analytics, SEO, and cross-channel advertising into one platform.
The acquisition spells transformation: Marketers of all stripes will be relieved of attending to the ever-changing technical details that shroud their work. It means that you will be better able to focus on transformative strategy rather than minutiae — and build better digital experiences that are meaningful, credible, and deliver results.”
The announcement states that MarketMuse customers will have a more unified approach to SEO, Accessibility and Content Optimization from one SaaS platform.
Read more:
Breaking News: MarketMuse Enters a Definitive Agreement to be Acquired by Siteimprove!
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Cast Of Thousands
Meta announces a new video tab, AI-powered ad tools, and creator partnership features.
Google integrates Amazon MCF with Merchant Center, offering improved shipping data display and potential boost in ad performance.
Google just announced new AI-powered video creation capabilities in Product Studio today.
With over 50% of the market share shifting to digital video ads, this update makes video creation for brands of all sizes easier to enter the market.
Curious how to get started? Read on for the full update.
Within Product Studio, marketers can now transform their current product images into high-quality, dynamic videos.
To get started, you’ll select the product you want featured, and then will choose a video theme.
The AI video generation tool can then customize the video to include specifics like:
To make it easier for advertisers, Google said “These videos can be downloaded to use across Ads campaigns, Merchant Center, your website, or other marketing channels.”
Video generation is available in Merchant Center, or the Google and YouTube app within Shopify.
In order to start generating videos in Merchant Center, you’ll need to have brand information set up within the platform.
This includes your brand colors and logo.
Then, within Merchant Center Next, navigate to the “Products” page, then click “Product Studio.” To choose a product, click “Get started”.
From there, select the product you want to generate a new video for.
This is where you’ll select a theme and choose from a variety of the optional add-ons, like a headline or audio tracks.
The video generation can take a few minutes, and then you’ll have the option to generate a high-res video or download a low-res video for easy sharing capabilities.
As of the announcement, video generation in Product Studio is only available for merchants in the United States.
Google does plan to expand to additional countries in the near future, but no concrete timeline as of yet.
Creating product videos for cross-channel marketing efforts is about to get more streamlined for many advertisers, right in time for the holidays.
The update can save marketers valuable time and resources on creatives, which allows them to shift the focus on other high priority items that may arise during a busy Q4 season.
Microsoft Ads made some significant enhancements for ads in Copilot last week.
Not only have they made updates to the Copilot user experience, they’ve integrated more AI features for advertisers within Microsoft Ads.
These updates continue to shape how users interact with Copilot and how advertisers interact with the Microsoft Ads platform.
Let’s take a look at the new updates rolling out.
Part of the evolution of Microsoft Copilot is aiming to simplify, yet personalize, the user’s digital experience.
The update will now better depict the difference between an organic listing and a sponsored conversation within Copilot.
They’re making that happen by featuring ads in Copilot below the Copilot organic response.
To make the experience more relevant to users, there will be fewer annotations and extensions shown.
Additionally, ads will now be triggered based on the whole conversation within Copilot, not just the last prompt a user gives.
Copilot has released a feature called “ad voice” which will introduce how the ads are relevant and connected to their Copilot conversation. This is shown before an ad blocker to give the user a chance to experience the ads within the conversation.
The updated experience will roll out later this month, starting on copilot.microsoft.com, and then will expand to both iOS and Android apps, along with the experiences in Bing and Microsoft Edge.
On the other side of Copilot updates, there’s a few new features using Copilot’s AI technologies to help advertisers boost productivity and insights.
The new Diagnostics feature in Copilot for Microsoft Ads will help lend a hand to advertisers to review items like:
This takes place within the Copilot conversation experience and is set to start piloting later this month.
It’s goal is to save advertisers time on day-to-day campaign management so they can spend more time analyzing and optimizing their accounts.
Another new feature within Copilot for Microsoft Ads is the performance snapshot.
Similar to the diagnostics tool, advertisers will use the conversational experience to ask Copilot how their accounts are doing.
They can get insights on items like:
The performance snapshot will also start piloting later this month, and will gradually roll out to all eligible regions when available.
Microsoft continues to develop and evolve its solutions from direct feedback from users and advertisers, which is a welcome experience for advertisers alike.
For advertisers already using Microsoft Ads, look for these key features in the upcoming weeks or months.
If you’re not currently using Microsoft Ads, it may be worth testing out a portion of your PPC budget this season to compare how its performance measures up against your Google Ads campaigns.
Google limits robots.txt support to four fields, clarifying its stance on unsupported directives.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy, Executive Director of the WordPress Project, officially announced her resignation, ending a nine-year tenure. This comes just two weeks after Matt Mullenweg launched a controversial campaign against a managed WordPress host, which responded by filing a federal lawsuit against him and Automattic.
She posted an upbeat notice on her personal blog, reaffirming her belief in the open source community as positive economic force as well as the importance of strong opinions that are “loosely held.”
She wrote:
“This week marks my last as the Executive Director of the WordPress project. My time with WordPress has transformed me, both as a leader and an advocate. There’s still more to do in our shared quest to secure a self-sustaining future of the open source project that we all love, and my belief in our global community of contributors remains unchanged.
…I still believe that open source is an idea that can transform generations. I believe in the power of a good-hearted group of people. I believe in the importance of strong opinions, loosely held. And I believe the world will always need the more equitable opportunities that well-maintained open source can provide: access to knowledge and learning, easy-to-join peer and business networks, the amplification of unheard voices, and a chance to tap into economic opportunity for those who weren’t born into it.”
The resignation comes amidst the backdrop of a conflict between WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and the managed WordPress web host WP Engine, which has brought unprecedented turmoil within the WordPress community, including a federal lawsuit filed by WP Engine accusing Mullenweg of attempted extortion.
The news about the resignation was leaked on October 2nd by the founder of the WordPress news site WP Tavern (now owned by Matt Mullenweg), who tweeted that he had spoken with Josepha that evening, who announced her resignation.
He posted:
“I spoke with Josepha tonight. I can confirm that she’s no longer at Automattic.
She’s working on a statement for the community. She’s in good spirits despite the turmoil.”
Josepha tweeted the following response the next day:
“Ok, this is not how I expected that news to come to y’all. I apologize that this is the first many of you heard of it. Please don’t speculate about anything.”
While her resignation was somewhat of an open secret it’s still a significant event because of recent events at WordPress, including the resignations of 8.4% of Automattic employees as a result of an offer of a generous severance package to all employees who no longer wished to work there.
Read the official announcement:
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Wirestock Creators
WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO announced today that he offered Automattic employees the chance to resign with a severance pay and a total of 8.4 percent. Mullenweg offered $30,000 or six months of salary, whichever one is higher, with a total of 159 people taking his offer.
Given the recent controversies created by Mullenweg, one might be tempted to view the walkout as a vote of no-confidence in Mullenweg. But that would be a mistake because some of the employees announcing their resignations either praised Mullenweg or simply announced their resignation while many others tweeted how happy they are to stay at Automattic.
One former employee tweeted that he was sad about recent developments but also praised Mullenweg and Automattic as an employer.
He shared:
“Today was my last day at Automattic. I spent the last 2 years building large scale ML and generative AI infra and products, and a lot of time on robotics at night and on weekends.
I’m going to spend the next month taking a break, getting married, and visiting family in Australia.
I have some really fun ideas of things to build that I’ve been storing up for a while. Now I get to build them. Get in touch if you’d like to build AI products together.”
Another former employee, Naoko Takano, is a 14 year employee, an organizer of WordCamp conferences in Asia, a full-time WordPress contributor and Open Source Project Manager at Automattic announced on X (formerly Twitter) that today was her last day at Automattic with no additional comment.
She tweeted:
“Today was my last day at Automattic.
I’m actively exploring new career opportunities. If you know of any positions that align with my skills and experience!”
Naoko’s role at at WordPress was working with the global WordPress community to improve contributor experiences through the Five for the Future and Mentorship programs. Five for the Future is an important WordPress program that encourages organizations to donate 5% of their resources back into WordPress. Five for the Future is one of the issues Mullenweg had against WP Engine, asserting that they didn’t donate enough back into the community.
Mullenweg himself was bittersweet to see those employees go, writing in a blog post:
“It was an emotional roller coaster of a week. The day you hire someone you aren’t expecting them to resign or be fired, you’re hoping for a long and mutually beneficial relationship. Every resignation stings a bit.
However now, I feel much lighter. I’m grateful and thankful for all the people who took the offer, and even more excited to work with those who turned down $126M to stay. As the kids say, LFG!”
Read the entire announcement on Mullenweg’s blog:
Featured Image by Shutterstock/sdx15