Jesse Friedman

Head of WP Cloud at Automattic—Author, Founder, Technologist, Speaker, Former Professor, and WordPress Contributor.

[Jesse Friedman @Professor]

Quiet here, I know.

Come talk to me here:
Blog: https://t.co/jkBUmXJwK1

BlueSky: https://t.co/dCsb483cjA

LinkedIn: https://t.co/khHm2d52hP

PocketCasts: https://t.co/FbbReVxREX

Instagram: https://t.co/2zTMgyFQIp

Facebook:
https://t.co/WQsuddZNz2

[Reign @ReignEcom]

👑 Reign is coming to the WooCommerce Marketplace.

WooCommerce powers more than four million stores. Direct-response and subscription merchants on WooCommerce will be able to run the Reign checkout and payments on the store they already have.

Thank you to the @WooCommerce and Automattic teams, and to Jesse Friedman (@professor) for giving merchants the tools to be on top.

[Jesse Friedman @Professor]

Eric never studied Stoicism. He didn't need to. He looked his mortality in face and didn't blink. Part one of my tribute to a friend, and a giant. https://t.co/RJOJsaXdgb

[Jesse Friedman @Professor]

@aishatyler Is there anyway to re-listen to your podcast from the beginning? You have such great content that seems inaccessible at the moment. Your website links to Libsyn but they don't seem to have anything. I tried your contact form but it failed to send.
I work for @automattic the company behind @pocketcasts if you ever want help with your online presence let us know.

[Jesse Friedman @Professor]

@photomatt just announced https://t.co/v7yO8E5NMy will redirect to our https://t.co/XOu8MjPPai profiles. Very cool!

Matt can you drop the 44 on mine? I've wanted my twitter handle to match my dotorg profile for nearly 2 decades https://t.co/RiJkITZnnN

[Porkbun @Porkbun]

Couldn't be happier to be a WP Cloud partner :) A world class WP hosting platform is a big part of our growth story 💪

[Jesse Friedman @Professor]

In this episode of the Daily Stoic, Ryan Holiday interviews Will Guidara, author of Unreasonable Hospitality — read it if you haven’t. I paused when Guidara said: “Adversity is a terrible thing to waste.” It’s a well-formed phrase for an idea I’ve been turning over for a while.

You see, lately, I’ve been thinking about empathy differently. We tend to treat it as the ability to feel what someone else is feeling. But I think it’s more than that — it’s putting yourself in a position to metabolize those feelings with them. Together, not just beside them.

https://t.co/xNF3jU55fq

[Jesse Friedman @Professor]

Most art forms are shaped by the artist in sight of the whole. Step back from a large sculpture or a massive mural. Compose a song and play it back in minutes.

But a book? You can never step far enough back to take it all in at once. Long-form storytelling may be the only art you make half-blind.

https://t.co/aeSYe8PTvd

[Jamie Marsland - Head of WordPress YouTube ❤️ @pootlepress]

This was just merged into Gutenberg trunk, and it’s a much bigger deal than it looks 👇

WordPress is getting a native UI to create custom post types.

No code. No plugins.
Just:
Settings → Post Types → Add

That might sound small… it’s not.

Custom post types go from “developer feature” → “everyday user feature”

Which means:
• Better structured content from day one
• Easier onboarding
• Less plugin dependency
• A cleaner foundation for AI to understand your site

And this is just the start.

Post types → taxonomies → …you can probably guess what comes next

You can see where this is heading…

WordPress is becoming a powerful content modelling system 👀

[Jesse Friedman @Professor]

Hilary Mason is joining me on stage next Wednesday in NYC. Doors at 5:30, conversation at 6:00. Drinks, food, and a room full of fascinating people (including me!)

https://t.co/zZC4HXy6V6

[Jesse Friedman @Professor]

@photomatt I so badly want to put a speaker and microphone in an action figure so I can talk to Claude AI through Batman.

[Automattic @automattic]

New York City, we are so back! 🗽

Mark your calendars for the next dev/ai/nyc, our monthly gathering exploring the intersection of open source and applied AI.

This time around, we have a fireside chat from @hmason, CEO of @playhiddendoor, and @Professor, head of @wpcloudofficial. Don’t miss it!

[Jesse Friedman @Professor]

People are loving the printed & mailed version of my blog (the photo below is from a friend and subscriber).

If you're interested in slowing down with some essays on leadership, systems, and the open web you can subscribe here:

https://t.co/dmjMYvSm8e

[Jesse Friedman @Professor]

I fought for my Island in a 250 Player Minecraft Civilization - a film by my daughter! https://t.co/0md2maVQ6T

[Jesse Friedman @Professor]

There's something that gets lost between a screen and your eye.
Not the idea — the ideas make it through fine — but something else. The weight of it. The sense that someone actually made something.
So I'm trying something different.
I write essays. Long ones, about cities and open source and the way technology changes how we move through the world. And if you go to https://t.co/WIO26VTgr1, you can subscribe and add your mailing address — and I'll send them to you. On paper. With a stamp.
You can read it on your porch. Fold it up. Spill coffee on it.
And if something moves you — a thought, a pushback, a story of your own — you can write me back. And I'll write back.
It's slower. That's sort of the point.
https://t.co/WIO26VTgr1

[Jesse Friedman @Professor]

Remember when I took that three-month sabbatical and wrote more than 100,000 words? My essay On The Sacred Act of Writing: Distraction Free is still one of my favorite reflections.

If you haven’t read it yet (or want a refresher): https://t.co/rEg4wp61ON

[Riad Benguella @riadbenguella]

One command. Zero Docker. Full WordPress.

npx @wordpress/env start --runtime=playground

⚡️wp-env now supports WordPress Playground as an experimental runtime. Spin up a local WordPress environment in seconds, no containers required.

[Seahawk @seahawkmedia]

In WP Legends Episode 80, @Professor of @automattic shares how @wpcloudofficial powers fast WordPress experiences and its global growth plans.

He also talks about real-time failover, remote culture, and work-life balance at Automattic.

https://t.co/1wpEIy1vkh

[Jesse Friedman @Professor]

. @Apple this alert is now as frequent and annoying as swamp mosquitos on a hot summer night. And the worst part is that no one even knows what it means.

The words make sense, but the actual meaning, the outcome, the implications are completely foreign to most people.

[Jesse Friedman @Professor]

High tech doesn’t mean high quality.
A frozen Uber, a looping Waymo, and one taxi ride made that painfully clear.
We’re losing something essential when our systems become high tech, low touch.
Full story: https://t.co/2C2Lbj2ZJX

[Jesse Friedman @Professor]

.@dhh,
@photomatt and @Dries are right: Precision of language matters. Freedom of speech and the ability to resist injustice now depend on the open web—and the open web only works if “open source” actually means something. Being lax about that definition quietly erodes its role as a safeguard.