Remember that blog I wrote a while back raising some of the concerns when eBay acquired Magento? Time to revisit.

I certainly wasn’t the only one asking ‘are they Apple or Microsoft’?

X.Commerce Innovate 2011 has been and gone. So what’s changed in Magento World?  Here are my own thoughts:

1. Magento isn’t going anywhere fast. This is a big part of X.com
2. Community, community, community. It’s a fact, we have more connections to merchants than X.com can make directly.  So by supporting developers/design agencies they are in turn supporting merchants. Hallelujah!
3. The App Store will only get bigger and hopefully smarter. This will relieve developers to do what they do best – develop
4. X.com realise that developers may be able to do things better than them. Wow, this is a real Apple moment. Amazing!
5. Magento Go is being re-shuffled to support extensions.  WebShopApps are the amongst the first to release a Trusted Extension
6. There will be more opportunities opening up to both merchants and developers. It’s exciting times for all

The overriding sense I got from Innovate 2011 was that Magento/X.com haven’t become arrogant, they are not complacent, and they know that hard work is ahead.  You can also see this amongst the design agencies large and small, the extension developers and the individual designers. I could almost spot Magento people walking around as they seemed so friendly and down-to-earth.

And, in my opinion this is one of the truly great things about Magento. It brings together people from all walks of life, this isn’t just for techies or just for corporate bods.  You can be niche, you can big or small, and you can make a difference.

The common factor amongst everyone at the #preinnovate tweetup was the sheer passion for Magento, and that we all truly love our jobs. That’s a great feeling, and we are privileged to be a part of this journey.

Having personally worked both in large companies and startups my advice to eBay is definitely to listen to the philosophy of a startup, do not hemorrhage money and become an unwieldy machine. Do not sit on your perch looking down at the masses. Follow the example of Magento, get involved, stay agile, muck in, understand, learn and evolve. Then together we will be successful.

Apple or Microsoft?  They seem to be making progress 😉

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 18th, 2011 at 12:19 pm and is filed under Developing with Magento. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.