Matt, the founder of WP, has his own way of dealing with feedback and objections | Hacker News Reader

Matt, the founder of WP, has his own way of dealing with feedback and objections

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A few of these points seem really petty, a monospace font in the editor? Deal with it.

I don't use Wordpress. I am on Facebook, do I think they care how their site should work? Why should they care what my opinion is? Because i am a user, I get to complain and get my way?

This attitude that users dictate how products and sites should function only brings to mind the Henry Ford quote in the Steve Jobs book. If Ford had asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse.

Apple has made a very successful business out of not building faster horses. If you want it your way, start your own business.

This Ford analogy is absolutely misleading and wrong under the context. Wordpress is not a new innovative idea in 2012 here, Wordpress is attempting to change with the time and users have all the rights to share their input.

I am not saying user feedback is not valuable. I am not sure where the line is between feedback and just being a brat is though.

MW has obviously been successful at a blogging platform and service (maybe other stuff, don't know his full history). My point about the Ford quote is that maybe he has a good vision for how his service should be run.

There is always going to be tension between the producers of a service and the consumers of that service. Neither could exist without the other, but I tend to feel that the exceptional people who have succeeded where others have failed should be given more credit.

If users of Wordpress.com were the "capable of building their own business type" they would not have been under Wordpress.com.

People can armchair quarterback all they want but until and unless you see things from Wordpress.com's users perspective, you won't get the point.

I think that you should consider if your opinion is the opinion of statistically significant number of users. From what I know, wordpress.com has millions of users and only small percent take part in such discussions. Can it be because most of them like or don't mind changes? Many times I've seen a group of users complaining, but after a rollback of changes I had to deal with another one with opposite views. It eventually leads to all users thinking that you are a jerk. I personally like to ignore such requests, as it keeps the size of unhappy group almost constant and I don't have to do anything I don't like.

And did you see that comment: "we’ve got 25 million beta testers".

Hope no one brings out the "free card" here.

I agree with chuk, of course.

One does the business they way he wants. If customers don't like your way they are free to leave.

If the business survives this kind of bleeding, then the business model was right anyway.

He does it right. Customers are not to be listened too much, they are to be taught to use the product the way the producer intend to.

Less support trouble, less costs, and the troublemakers go away.

Of course, I would never tell straight to my customers that if they don't like a feature they can go to h3ll, but guess what, thet are not going anywhere else.

Do you work at Facebook?

Do you understand that alternate options exist, and people can easily move to other services?

While you're looking at the alternate options, try to look at it from the user's - long time user's - perspective.

Yes, I understand people might leave. No, I do not work at facebook. The key is - in fact - people leaving. People who complain are a cost.

Now, if the service is low margin and low volume you can't afford losing customers. But if you have high margins, high volumes or a combination of both then a community that gets to vocal becomes a PR problem.

Think about gaming communities like Eve-Online... would you want your business be dictated by too angry and too vocal customers?

Those are not customer anymore, are a cost and costs must be purged.

Of course being frank about it makes one look like a bad guy, things that is happening here.

Nonetheless you have to break eggs to make an omelette.

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