Paul Bakaus' blog: Recent Episodes
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If there’s one generation-defining skill that creators need to learn going forward, what will it be? My bet: The ability to make, then monetize fans. The same way how years ago we talked about “googling” as a now-essential skill, the creators that have the highest engagement and return-per-follower are those that… truly understand how to […]
The post The generation-defining skill of Creator Economy 2.0 appeared first on Paul Bakaus' blog.
If you’re shooting video in 2022, chances are you’ll post it across multiple social media channels and platforms in a variety of resolutions native to said platform. The generally accepted best way to do this is by capturing horizontal video at a 16:9 aspect ratio, then converting it to formats like square (1:1) or vertical […]
The post 5 apps to auto-reframe / smart crop horizontal to vertical video appeared first on Paul Bakaus' blog.
How does a creator ‘figure things out’ and become successful? I was just asked that question on a podcast (coming out in a few weeks), and there are a million ways I could answer that sound smart, but only one that rings true: Experimentation. Unfortunately, experimentation can kill any business quickly if it is costly […]
The post Key to creator success? Cheap experimentation appeared first on Paul Bakaus' blog.
I’m excited to announce that as of today, I’m Koji‘s new Head of Creators. At Koji, I’ll be leading (and building) a creator success team that includes the sub-pillars of community, marketing, partnerships, business development, DevRel and more. Together with co-founders Sean and Dmitry, I’ll also be driving Koji’s product strategy going forward. Koji has […]
The post Powered by Koji appeared first on Paul Bakaus' blog.
Friday, April 1 (no April fools!) is my last day at Google. My mom reminded me recently that when I started coding at the age of 12, my dream was to one day work at Google. I still can’t believe that this German high school dropout somehow managed to turn that into a reality some […]
The post Leaving Google appeared first on Paul Bakaus' blog.
I once wondered out loud why famous musicians are almost expected to burn out and overdose at some point in their careers, and other types of celebrities less so. I forgot who my partner was in that conversation, but they responded that it’s much harder to be a musician than to be an actor, because […]
The post Influencer businesses stake their success on their personal brand – that’s a big risk appeared first on Paul Bakaus' blog.
If you're like me, you faced this problem a thousand times: You browse through a Google slide deck, find an animated GIF or image that you want to save and put into another document, deck or resource, but there is no apparent way to do this. Is this sounds familiar, you've come to the right place.
The post How to extract gifs, images & more from Google Slides decks appeared first on Paul Bakaus' blog.
Rex Woodbury publishes a great newsletter on Substack called Digital Native, and in his summary this week, he writes: While Web2 created enormous value, value always passed through a middleman. Centralized platforms—Facebook, Uber, Twitter, YouTube—control the data and make the rules. Web3 is about ownership. It’s about the direct connection between creators and consumers, obfuscating the […]
The post You don’t need to wait for Web3 to put creators in control of their destiny appeared first on Paul Bakaus' blog.
Yours truly was recently invited as guest to the JS Party podcast to talk about…not JS! If you’ve been wondering about where the the part of the web is going that is “content”, why it’s so critical to invest in it & the web creator landscape, and what Google is doing about it, I think […]
The post New podcast ep discussing the content web & creator economy appeared first on Paul Bakaus' blog.
I’m a big fan of Core Web Vitals, and the cumulative set of criteria that Google calls “Page Experience”, and that is not a coincidence! In the many conversations I’ve had with AMP haters skeptics, most have asked “why we can’t just measure whether something is fast & user friendly” when talking about why only […]
The post Getting my blog ready for Core Web Vitals & Page Experience appeared first on Paul Bakaus' blog.
I have some pretty big news. I, and thus, Google is hiring its first ever Creator Advocate. Now, you’d be forgiven for thinking “but wait, doesn’t Google already have plenty over at YouTube?” and indeed, YouTube has a set of amazing teams supporting creators on their platform. But I’m talking Google, not YouTube: And what […]
The post Google’s first Web Creator Advocate appeared first on Paul Bakaus' blog.
What makes a piece of content, or sub-platform truly open, and part of the open web’s content corpus? This turns out to be a deceivingly hard problem, because everyone I ask replies with a different angle of openness they care about. Over the years, smart folks like Tantek Çelik, Steven Pemberton and Brad Neuberg answered […]
The post The three freedoms of the web appeared first on Paul Bakaus' blog.
Remy recently posted an interesting, thought-provoking read on framework fatigue and how we’re making the web more complex ourselves: If you didn’t gather off the bat from the title, the problem with developing front end projects isn’t that it’s harder or more complicated, it’s that you made it harder and more complicated. You have the power of […]
The post Maybe everything is changing, all the time appeared first on Paul Bakaus' blog.
For all the discussion happening around individual slices of the web in the web developer community – may it be making web apps more feature rich, streamlined payments, smoother scrolling.. I’m starting to wonder if we need to talk more about the big picture. In this case, the big picture is the web as a product, being used by consumers worldwide. How should using the web feel like? What should the experience be like? What is the web we want?
Without giving it more thought, one might reply with something along the lines of “a powerful, open general platform where everything goes, naturally!”. That’s certainly the idealistic platform vision I share with many, but by itself, this doesn’t translate into a product, or experience that users want.
In order to translate surfing the web into a great product experience, we need a combination of two things:
- Self-control & self-governance of web developers & creators to ensure a smooth, delightful user experience.
- Specialized browsers that have a clear unique selling proposition (USP).
Let’s take a closer look at both.
The wild wild web, where everything goes The web’s beauty, and ugliness, is that it is an open, “everything goes” playing field. It’s great when it works. The most brilliant web developers and creative minds have created mind blowing stuff on the web. It’s the reason I dedicated my career to it.
But when it doesn’t work out, it creates a highly uneven, frustrating, and sometimes dangerous experience. Take nature: Nature is beautiful. But a tree growing through my roof isn’t. Cities need deforesting & streets to function, and modern societies need basic rules to protect the experience of all people. It’s not one versus the other: Of course I want nature to flourish, and of course I want freedom, but I acknowledge that the experience of modern civilization & society requires a more structured, streamlined approach.
It’s all fun and games until a tree grows through your house. To stay with this sort of analogy, there are still plenty of web aficionados that argue hard that traffic lights can’t tell me what to do, that drunk driving should be a choice, and more generally, that the lack of absolute freedom is limiting creativity and is no good. I respectfully disagree, and so do most of today’s consumers.
The gateway without purpose: A case for specialized browsers Today’s primary method of accessing the web is via a web browser. A web browser is not a product with a clear value proposition other than being a gateway to the web. That means that in order to understand the app’s value, you must first understand the web’s value. It’s like me giving you a key without telling you what it is for!
Look, you’re not just gonna walk through that Stargate if you don’t know what’s on the other side. Many new consumers coming online for the first time do not know what you know – that the web is a wonderful, open platform with tons of different use-cases. To somebody starting their digital life on a smartphone, every app on the home screen must have a specific purpose. The browser doesn’t.
The walled gardens that flourish because ‘outside’ is a mess Meanwhile, new, specialized consumer apps with their own closed platforms are succeeding where we don’t. They find a compelling value proposition for users to download them (“Here’s where you find cute cat videos!”, or “Here you find inspirational pics and stories of your friends and celebrities!”), but that’s just half of the story. Creating or developing content or apps in those ecosystems is a highly controlled, limited, but streamlined experience. The only “performance” a creator worries about is their growth performance, as you literally cannot upload slow, unoptimized or cluttered content into these ecosystems.
Tragically, most of the walled garden content ecosystems do not preserve what made the web unique, open, and powerful. There are no links, because links might allow the consumer to ‘break out’. Creators don’t control and own their relationships with their audiences, and are severely limited in how to monetize.
The sad irony is that those fighting for absolute freedom for the web platform are losing the most, and are alienating new generations of consumers. Those consumers are abandoning the wild wild web and are moving to cities that ensure a safe, but monotonous and highly controlled quality of life.
Time for new community gardens and grand, open cities It doesn’t have to be that way. We can come together and start envisioning, then building a web of the future that works, as a product. What should the web be best at? What does the web look like as the best content app? The best app platform? The best e-commerce experience? What should the overall consumer experience feel like? How can we self-regulate to stop the walled gardens from drinking our milkshakes?
Walled gardens, drinking our milkshake. It might be time to think about how to find convergence, that is, a place somewhere between the messy wild forests and the extremely sterile and suffocating walled gardens. The web as a platform to host community gardens, UX-focused spaces that center around open access, but have the right level of regulations and conventions that enable a fantastic experience for everyone.
Personally, I’ve long stopped to advocate for and create frameworks, APIs and developer tools that are disconnected from these questions. My own team and I are, for example, laser focused at ensuring the web is the best content app, both for users, creators & developers. Whatever we create, we do it for this reason.
I’d love to see more folks around the world come up with their own visions for the web, and actively work towards it. Are you one of them? Let me know! Onwards!
The post Helping the Web find its product-market fit appeared first on Paul Bakaus' blog.
TL;DR: If you’re a prolific content creator on the web (and in the US), and if you want to help others achieve the same, there’s a new unique part-time job opportunity for you.
Web Creators..who? If you’ve been following my work, you might have noticed that I’ve taken all my collected skills and knowledge around Developer Relations and have started to apply it to another important audience that was historically underserved by Google: Web Creators (yes, that means bloggers, journalists, editorial staff, content marketers etc!).
My team and I have created the Google Web Creators initiative just a few weeks ago, resulting so far in a blog, a Twitter and Instagram account and a YouTube channel.
So, what is a Web Creator, and what is the whole point? Start here:
But…why? Our mission is to do what we’ve done for Developers for over a decade now: Help content creators on the web achieve success via outreach, support and tools that inspire, educate and inform.
We’re doing this because we firmly believe in open access to information, and believe that the web needs to be the primary place for content creators to share their content. The web is the only global, open content platform we have, and the only platform where creators truly own their destiny: audience, monetization and content.
Join the editorial team that helps creators achieve success on the web In order to do this well, we need the help of actual professional content creators, regularly contributing to the Google Web Creators channels. So we’ve partnered with ASG who created a unique new job opportunity, for you to:
- Generate educational/inspirational content regularly for the Google Web Creators channels (blog posts, guides, tutorials, videos, social)
- Interact with & build an online content creator community, understanding their needs and conveying feedback internally
- Actively advocate for best practices and give strategic guidance to partners and customers
- Work with us to try out new formats, tools, etc. to offer feedback on our product roadmaps from a creator view point
- Try new content formats like Web Stories and storytelling techniques on your personal channels (with full editorial freedom, not sponsored posts)
The types of inspirational videos you’ll help create What’s unique about this role is that we’ve carefully crafted it so you can keep your own personal brand / company / website, and split your time between both. This is a unique setup, one that I think will result in much more qualitative work due to you actually living the life of a creator.
So if this resonates with you, and you know somebody, or you yourself are a prolific content creator with an established presence on the web, based in the US, and are interested in a side hustle directly related to being a creator, share the job offer or apply now.
AMA on Twitter!
The post Job opportunity: Google Web Creators…needs you! appeared first on Paul Bakaus' blog.