New owners to cut 75% of WeTransfer staff after acquisition

Ivan Mehta, reporting for Techcrunch:

Italy-based app company Bending Spoons, which owns Evernote and Meetup, is planning to lay off 75% of the staff of file transfer service WeTransfer, TechCrunch has learned. Bending Spoons acquired the Dutch company in July for an undisclosed amount.

The company confirmed the plans for the WeTransfer layoff to TechCrunch. The staff that is being let go will be informed after Bending Spoons goes through local regulations in different countries regarding lay offs. Dutch media reported that WeTransfer has over 350 employees.

WeTransfer was one of my favorite sites since its launch, and they did a great job making quick file-sharing bearable. I had used its premium features extensively during my Filmingo days, but it did feel like it was losing the plot in the last few years.

That said, imagine reading the news that 75% of your company will be let go and whether that includes you will not be known for another few days… I feel for the staff there.

September 9, 2024 ✚ Permalink

Gravatar Introduces Profiles-as-a-Service and a new REST API

Ronnie Burt, writing on the Gravatar blog:

For two decades, Gravatar has been an unsung hero of the internet, quietly powering billions of avatars across websites like Slack, OpenAI, Atlassian, and more. Today, we are excited to introduce the latest addition to the Gravatar suite of tools: our new REST API. We redesigned the new API from the ground up to make it simpler and more efficient for developers to integrate Gravatar’s globally recognized avatars and profile data into their apps and websites.

and

We’re moving beyond the humble avatar and aiming to be the open platform of choice for publicly sharing all kinds of profile data — bios, interests, preferences, work history, social connections, and more.

Gravatar, owned by Automattic, has been delivering user avatars to websites and apps for a long time now. This new offering seems like a fantastic idea, and I wish more sites and apps start adopting their new API. At least IFTTT should, but may be also Mastodon?

Here’s my new Gravatar page: https://gravatar.com/preshit

June 11, 2024 ✚ Permalink

In Loving Memory of Square Checkbox

Nikita has published a lovely piece on his blog @ tonsky.me about the death of our beloved checkboxes. I urge you to go take a look, especially for all the screenshots.

February 1, 2024 ✚ Permalink

Sarah Gooding’s “Last Call” at WP Tavern

WordPress has been an important part of my life for the last decade or more. I’m not sure when exactly, but I’ve been subscribed to WP Tavern for a long time now, and it has been an excellent source of news and updates about what’s been happening in the world of WordPress — everything from plugin acquisitions and notable theme releases to security breaches and fixes and other updates. Many of my favorite or most memorable articles were written by Sarah Gooding.

Unfortunately, Sarah has posted possibly her last article on the site, titled “Last Call“. She writes,

This has been an emotional, bittersweet morning for me, reading through old posts, as I close the book on my time at this beloved publication. Today is my last day before moving on to embrace a new challenge in the world of tech.  

In 2013, the year I started writing at the Tavern, just 17.4% of the web was running on WordPress, but the momentum I felt at that last WordCamp San Francisco was intoxicating and undeniable. It marked the ascendency of the global WordPress community and the move to embrace new tools like Slack and GitHub for contributing to core.

At that time, one frustrating thing I frequently heard was “It’s just WordPress, don’t take it so seriously.” Yet there we were, standing on the edge of an amazing acceleration of WordPress’ adoption and expansion of the ecosystem that brought meaningful work to millions and gave people a voice on the web. It was never “just WordPress” to me. As the software enters its third decade, powering 43% of the world’s websites, WordPress continues to be an irrepressible force of good on the web. I’d like to think the Tavern had a small part in that.

WP Tavern has been a fantastic place to get a no-nonsense feed of excellent articles and many of them were written by Sarah herself. I’m actually feeling sad knowing that Matt doesn’t have a ready replacement for Sarah yet, and I’m definitely going to miss Sarah’s content.

November 28, 2023 ✚ Permalink

Adding ActivityPub Support to this WordPress Site

I just installed and enabled this fantastic ActivityPub WordPress plugin by Matthias Pfefferle & team Automattic on this blog. You should be able to follow new posts published here going forward by searching for the following user in your favorite Mastodon or Fediverse app of choice.

@[email protected]

Do let me know at https://mastodon.social/@preshit if it works!

September 27, 2023 ✚ Permalink

GoDaddy is Retiring the Media Temple Brand

I missed this news last month:

For the past 24 years, Media Temple dedicated itself to serving the needs of the digital creative community. Thus, our mantra—for creatives, by creatives.  This mantra led to our decision that now is the time to retire the Media Temple brand and fully integrate into GoDaddy.

GoDaddy acquired Media Temple back in 2013, so props to them for keeping the brand alive all these years. Media Temple was not only one of the best places to host your websites before the acquisition, but also one of the coolest brands to be a part of. Just having the (mt) branding on your website was like a stamp that you were serious about your website.

It’s a shame that they had to go with GoDaddy — I still think GoDaddy is one of the scummiest companies around.

January 18, 2023 ✚ Permalink

Freepik Acquires Iconfinder

The Freepik Company, known for its projects like Freepik, Wepik, Flaticon and Slidesgo, has announced the acquisition of Iconfinder.

Speaking about the acquisition, Martin LeBlanc — Founder & CEO of Iconfinder, writes:

For now, Iconfinder will stay Iconfinder, and Flaticon will stay Flaticon. My role will transition into the Head of icons, and we’ll start setting up a direction, merging the Iconfinder and Flaticon teams, and making gradual changes. Our goal is to learn from each other what we are best at and apply the practices and approaches to build the world’s best icon site, helping people around the world make beautiful designs faster.

Freepik has been a tremendous resource for designers of any kind, and similarly, Iconfinder’s vast collection of icons has been a personal favorite of mine for many years. I hope to see them collectively improve both the projects down the line.

October 4, 2022 ✚ Permalink

WordPress.org HomePage & Download Page Get a Redesign

The WordPress.org homepage and the WordPress.org/download page have just gotten a much-needed makeover.

Nicholas Garofalo, writing on WordPress.org News:

The new homepage brings more attention to the benefits and experience of using WordPress, while also highlighting the community and resources to get started.

The new download page greets visitors with a new layout that makes getting started with WordPress even easier by presenting both the download and hosting options right at the top.

This redesign follows the redesign of the WordPress News blog earlier this year.

August 18, 2022 ✚ Permalink