TTL 27
👋 Good Morfternight friends.
A shorter note today, containing what is probably my most embarrassingly wrong professional quote ever.
I love spoilers, so I’ll share the quote right away:
“We’ll add Facebook login when Facebook adds WordPress.com login.”
— Me, 2013
The story behind this quote comes from a post I shared on my recently reactivated LinkedIn account (follow?). Enjoy.
On pride and laziness about social media
Building tools to build websites is my job. It’s what I do at Automattic.
Websites are a powerful way to communicate.
But so are social media platforms — even if they’re completely different spaces.
In the end, they serve the same fundamental purpose: connecting people.
For a long time, I resisted social media.
I thought: “If people want to find good content, they’ll come to the open web.”
I even remember a conversation back in 2013, when we were discussing whether to add Facebook, Google, or Twitter login options on WordPress.com.
At the time, I said, “We’ll add Facebook login when Facebook adds WordPress login.”
Everyone laughed — and rightly so.
The truth was clear: while we had tens of millions of users, Facebook already had hundreds of millions.
It wasn’t about principle.
It was pride.
And pride can be dangerous.
It makes you believe that people should move toward you — just because you think your platform is better.
But there’s another danger: laziness.
Even once you accept that you need to show up where people are (on social media), it’s easy to stop there when you forget the real goal is not just to meet your audience — it’s to invite them to your space.
Social media is the bridge, not the destination.
That’s it for today.
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Here on TTL, we dig into toolkits, practical tips, and effective strategies, with a focus on leadership and distributed teams (that’s what I do every day, add me on LinkedIn).
Whether you’re steering a tech startup or leading a remote team, these insights are designed to help you navigate the complexities of modern leadership.
I also publish on paolo.blog and monochrome.blog
Cheers,
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