WordPress, Docker's acquisition, Neon's integration

News hasn't slowed down, even during the middle of December. While some companies are still reeling from layoffs and cutbacks, others are spending money on acquisitions and rolling out new features.

Let's get into it.

Hot Product Launch

The co-founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg delivered his yearly address, and encouraged WordPress developers to "learn AI deeply". He also previewed upcoming WordPress features. The most exciting for developers are:

Custom Field data in blocks, which is a "last mile" feature for full site editing

The Interactivity API, which enables instant search and page transitions

The Data Liberation Project, enabling migrations from popular platforms to WordPress. Interestingly this includes converting Figma designs into Gutenberg blocks

It's been some time since I've seen the WordPress community have this much excitement and swagger.

Products Launches

✨ Docker acquired AtomicJar, which provides a unit-testing framework for containers

✨ Vercel improved its Speed Insights tool so now you can track Core Web Vitals scores when using any front-end framework, not just Nextjs

✨ Xata, the serverless database released an SDK for Go✨ Neon announced a Polyscale integration, which "allows you to easily cache your data globally through its low-latency regional edge network"

Enterprise Watch

AWS Amplify has a new(ish) integration for Contentful.

Prioritizing this integration for both sides makes sense. Contentful isn't the most innovative headless CMS, but it's the most popular pick by large organizations. And AWS Amplify is not likely more popular than Netlify, but I'm certain it has more enterprise users.

Kudos to those teams. It takes product discipline to focus on integrations with the actual stack of your best paying customers, not just what's broadly popular or innovative.

Need help planning your next impactful product launch? I offer single day consulting sessions to work out your messaging and channel strategy, so you can land more sales. Hit "reply" to this email, and let's talk. - Hashim Warren