Bricks team's stance on Cwicky's sudden end of development

21

You think being called the second best is a compliment?
“You are not my best friend; you are my second best friend”
“You were not my first best choice for a wife, you were my second best choice for a wife”
“Tesla is best, but if you want to buy Rivian, it’s not bad, it’s the second best”

Being called the second best is the worst kind of compliment to give and receive, and if you watched the debate, and as I recall, Louis objected to either being called the second best or the best in Gutenberg.

Louis wanted affirmation from Kevin to being called the Best page builder in Wordpress, but his product could not stand up to scrutiny.
Kevin made valid arguments and won the debate.

The larger point being, there are tens of YouTubers who have ten different opinions on which is the best pagebuilder.
Some advocate for Bricks, some for Elementor, some for Divi, while some for something else.
Potential Customers listen to these advocacies, scrutinise the product and make up their mind one way or other.

Page builder developers, who have some foresight, do not go inviting YouTubers who are critical of their product to their own YouTube channel to further trash it in front of their customers.
It’s a recipe for disaster as customers lose confidence in their choice of their chosen pagebuilder, and it becomes difficult to acquire and attract new customers to a product which got labelled as the second best.

The fault for the debacle lies with Louis, not Kevin.
If the city of Troy didn’t let the Wooden Horse in, the City of Troy would still be standing.

Trust that clarifies.

Cheers!

22

As companies, Bricks and cwicly shared similarities, being developed and operated by small teams with one prominent and brilliant lead developer (Thomas / Louis).

If you want to reduce the risk and want the most future-proof way, then better to stay aligned with core/native WP way to build a website, either with classic theme or gutenberg/FSE.

Bricks will increase your productivity to pump websites easier and faster. but with the similar risk to cwicly. so i think its a matter of choice.

Other builder like breakdance, pinegrow, divi, beaver, etc has nice about us info on their website that create better presentation of trusted company.

Maybe bricks can take it as inspiration to make it less feel anonymous? It would be better for its user to get more impression of ‘You are in good company’.

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23

These are false equivalencies; nobody does this. Your lack of earnestness in your commentary makes me unmotivated to continue participating in this thread.

Again, in the video, Kevin wasn’t critical of the platform. Kevin advocated for Cwicly and recommended that people should buy it. They had philosophical differences and had a respectful back-and-forth. If you watched the video and came up with this conclusion I absolutely want to buy whatever you enjoyed when you watched it.

A negative or differing sentiment about a product isn’t enough to take it down. I think there’s much more to the story on Louis’s end. Your commentary above is incendiary and not helpful to the discourse.

I think it’s truly a bad thing that he’s taking it down. Everyone loses.

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24

My analysis is incendiary and lacks earnestness and there are false equivalencies, and you want to know what I am smoking!
Haha.

I gave a reasoned assessment, whilst you are making blanket statements.

That YouTube video by Louis was not a let’s chit chat about Cwicly and sing and dance around with Kevin Geary.

The title of the video was: Fact checking Cwicly sceptics.

Why did Cwicly chose to make the video?

Because Kevin wrote an article trashing Cwicly’s choice of Tailwind integration.

Kevin won the debate and Cwicly lost the argument.

It’s the market, not the olympics.
There are no participation trophies or medals for the second place holder, just lack of customers and therefore money to continue operations and development.

Labelling something second best is the worst kind of compliment, best not given.
And if such a compliment is indeed given, it should not be entertained and given a spotlight.
If you can’t wrap your head around this simple concept, then it’s alright; Believe what you want to believe.

Cheers.

25

My guy, I can tell you like to stir the pot. I made no blanket statements. I watched the videos (I’m assuming you did not or didn’t watch all of them). Your “reasoned statements” include conjecture, opinion, and conspiracy.

Have fun making your reality, John.

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26

You place far too much influence on a single YouTube video, or even on Kevin Geary. Kevin’s influence is not extremely wide, and his tighter grouping are already sold on Bricks with a handful hanging on to Oxygen or whatever else.

That YouTube video did nothing to change any of Kevin’s existing followers since they all already know what he thinks of things. Nor does it change Cwicly’s existing customs since they are likely all LTDers.
That only leaves a handful of “on the fencers” who might stumble across that video, and how many could that possibly be?
The Bricks people are fine and happy with Bricks. The existing Cwicly people are happy because it’s a great builder. Kevin has said a zillion times Cwicly was a great builder and the best on the GB platform. Many people already made that purchase due to his recommendations.

So really, how much influence do you really think one single video did just because Kevin didn’t like the icons layout or doesn’t care for Tailwind? If you’re talking about the video titled “Fact-checking Tailwind Sceptics”, it was a livestream and only has 3200 views, probably a bunch of them after they shut down. Lots of positive comments, lots of thumbs up, possitive followup comments by both parties.

coments

Kevin saying he wants to get more involved in Cwicly in 2024 must have been such a turn off to potential Cwicly customers right?

Elementor, Beaver Builder, and Divi have nothing BUT constant critisizm by professionals, yet they are doing fine.

Cwicly could have sold its operations, changed its business plan and marketing, prices, something. But no, they just didn’t like working on it any more and that is entirely their own decision to make.

In my opinion I think the writing was simply on the wall. Gutenberg is going to (hopefully) get better and better, and make builders built on top of it less and less needed. It isn’t the best long-term plan right from the start. Let’s see how Kadence does now because they are probably the next best GB builder, but they have a larger ecosystem of profitable products I think.

Louis can do what he wants with his business and product, but suggesting Kevin had any kind of influence like some people seem to think, is really bizarre considering how much he has praised and promoted the product.

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27

Louis wrote a parting statement on behalf of Cwicly that they shut down because of negative comments from an influencer.
Everyone knows who that influencer is.
There are videos and articles from that influencer to prove the point.
And your assessment is that I am stirring the pot making a conspiracy, haha, talk about living in alternate realities and drinking the Kool-Aid.

Again, the fault lies with Louis, not Kevin.
Kevin is free to write and give his opinions on any subject matter he pleases. That’s his right.
To put a spotlight on the views of one influencer, succumb to the pressure and shut down the product says very poorly of Cwicly, and Louis in particular.

This is a reasoned analysis, and if you wish to disagree, then sure, that’s your right and prerogative.
Cheers.

28

You are sharing screenshots of pleasantries exchanged between Kevin and Louis on Cwicly’s YouTube channel.
Of course they are going to share pleasantries on public channels, what else are they going to write!
“Fuck you Kevin, for criticising Cwicly”
“Fuck you Louis, you fucking chump”
Haha.

You are correct, that Kevin’s influence is not that vast, and the Wordpress ecosystem is pretty diverse. The existence and vast user base of Elementor, Divi, Gutenberg et all proves that.

However, there aren’t a lot many number of users who use class based builders.
There is another Louis, from Breakdance, the original developer behind Oxygen, and he handed it over and moved on to build Breakdance.
In his introductory livestream for Breakdance, he shared the concerns of the market for class based builders being extremely small and difficult to target via paid advertisements or otherwise, and thus he moved on to cater to a larger user base, (Elementor,Divi, et all).

Within the class based users, Kevin has a good influence, and rightly so, he has good products and educational content of value to sell.
But as I mentioned, and Kevin himself admits, that Kevin is #TeamBricks.
Cwicly can’t get Kevin. Kevin is sold on Bricks and rightly so, Bricks is a great page-builder.
Louis from Cwicly chased Kevin, and it was a futile exercise. It’s like you see an attractive and beautiful woman, and you want to date her, but find out she is married, you gotta move on with life, because if you pursue her, things are going to get messy.

It was a no-win situation for Cwicly inviting Kevin to come to Cwicly’s YouTube channel and debate the merits of ACSS vs Tailwind.
What does Cwicly expect Kevin to say?
Tailwind is better than ACSS?
Cwicly is better than Bricks?
Kevin is never going to say that, and if he doesn’t, Cwicly falls into second place, by its own doing and validates Kevin’s list.

What does Elementor say?
We have 15 Million live websites. We are the best Wordpress pagebuilder.
What does Divi say?
We have over a million users. We are the best Wordpress page builder.
What does any page builder say? We are the best.
The moment any company selling any product or service validates outside claims that they are the second best, it’s game over.

Thus the Troy analogy.

Cheers!

29

Why would you think they want to say that instead?
Has it ever occured to you that perhaps they are being sincere and enjoyed the talk? You think Louis had no idea of Kevin’s criticisms and loyalties before inviting him or that he might be challenged on Tailwind? Don’t be naive.

And? YouTube is filled with interviews of people talking to each other and those people have favorite products or products they’ve built. This is such a non-point it boggles the mind to think it means anything.

And? You think Louis is dumb, then criticize Louis. But you’re not, you seem to have a lot of venom for Kevin instead. Louis knew all this going in, and he’s an adult and can do what he wants. Perhaps he thought answering some challenges would help him.

There is no “Troy”. Do you honestly think Louis benefits from only ever talking with people who slobber over his greatness at every turn? He doesn’t have much market to find those people.
Second, those marketing slogans by the other builders are complete trash and everyone knows it. Cwicly doesn’t win by pretending to be the best or only talking to people who will affirm Cwicly as the best. They don’t have enough market share or clout to attempt that kind of marketing. They are ground-level, grassroots at best, which means they need to debate and push their merits.

Cwicly would win by answering criticism with reasoned responses and showing how the product is great for its particular market. Cwicly needs to win over people who are already using other products. There are very few people now just entering the market looking for their first new page builder to try. Cwicly has to steal users from other builders, or at least bare-bones Gutenberg, if it wants to gain traction. I have to assume most all their users came from people like Kevin in the first place, and their Appsumo run, and by being one of the few pro-level builders on top of GB, cause who else is there? Kadence I guess, don’t know any others.

I don’t really know what you’re arguing about to be honest. Kevin praised and recommended Cwicly a lot. The video interview they did had barely any views and not going to be much influence, nor were they fighting anyway, they both enjoyed it.
Even if you were a new user hunting for a new GB page builder, you’re not likely to come across that specific video precisely in the time range between when it was released and before they shut down. Just how many 10s of thousands of potential users do you think were scared off by that one interview that had a few thousand views? Nobody in the comments said they were going to look elsewhere, it didn’t seem to turn anyone away.

To me, it seems like you’re just inventing a ton of “between-the-lines” assumptions for the sake of dumping on Kevin for no good reason. Perhaps what actually happened in real life, is two developers had a talk and challenged each other with some conflicting ideas, and it was all good and they are friends and looked forward to future endeavors together. The hyper cynical take doesn’t fit the facts.

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30

Have you read the the Cwicly announcement?
Attached herewith is a screenshot and a link for your kind reference.

Cheers!

IMG_0368
IMG_0368780×1751 348 KB

31

Yes I read it, but if you expect me to find Kevin Geary in there then you’re nuts. Especially not due to one small video of a friendly exchange about Tailwind that few people saw.

Most people think it’s just a cop out and they couldn’t make money or some other reason. So who knows?

Either the Cwicly people or Kevin himself will have to identify this mysterious “influencer”, because I haven’t seen any such people bashing Cwicly. Since I’ve heard about that project, I’ve only ever seen people compliment it. And last week I surveyed a handful of popular YT channels in the builder market and all these people have their favorite builders and products, it doesn’t make any sense.

In the vast world of coming-and-going WordPress plugins where these products pop up and go away at rapid pace, I’ve never seen a tool shut down complaining about influencers who don’t like them. It’s really really odd, and uncommon, and to me, quite silly, as the plugin market is pretty cutthroat just in general.

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32

Yeah, it must be some mysterious influencer nobody knows about.
Let’s leave it at that.
Cheers!

33

That’s fine, you have your opinions.
Kevin is not the only “influencer” though. In fact many other channels heavy into page builder content have more subs and views than him and they also have their favorite tools, so I really don’t see any connection whatsoever that doesn’t apply to all influencers who use a favored tool.

You have your hot take, I have mine. I think they dumped a year of development into integrating one little CSS tool that probably nobody was asking for. They didn’t make a ton of money so this was probably a lot of personal investment of unpaid time and it didn’t pan out. The Appsumo run was probably not very successful and didn’t give them enough money to pump into marketing and development. They couldn’t find enough people to push their product and growth was slow.

There is a LOT that goes into this, more than simply “people on YouTube have other favored tools.”
I believe the story that they couldn’t get a good leg into the market. I don’t believe the “toxic environment” nonsense. It’s a highly competitive field, they probably weren’t cut out for fighting in it.

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34

Kevin did a review of Breakdance too, like he did of Cwicly.
Kevin said Breakdance is better than Elementor but not as good as Bricks.
Someone posted that review in the Breakdance community.
Do you know what Louis from Breakdance did?
He got that review removed from the Breakdance community channels.

“You don’t like Breakdance, no worries, good luck with Bricks, you have no place in the Breakdance community.”

That’s the correct approach. The founder has to protect the community of existing and potential customers from negative influences and influencers.

Now Kevin is after the Generate Blocks community, telling them, hey congratulations, Cwicly is out, you are now the second best pagebuilder behind Bricks.
Haha. Rinse and repeat.

Modern Day Troy - A tale of Two Louis.

Anyhow, cheers!

35

“Correct approach” - pretend challenges and criticisms don’t exist, ban everyone who doesn’t praise you completely, run from competition, hide information from your users, don’t debate anyone, build a solid fake world bubble over yourself, your product, and your users. If someone likes a different product slightly more than yours, they are a trojan horse cause somehow that analogy makes sense.

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36

Do you know what is the top ranking keyword with one of the highest CPC (cost per click)?

Its the word “Best”

One of the highest dollar amount is associated with this word because this is what potential customers look for.

“Best Lawyer in XYZ city”

“Best Dentist in XYZ city”

“Best Product in XYZ city”

“Best Service in XYZ city”

I trust you already know why.

Because nobody searches for “Second Best product/service in XYZ city”

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a Trillion Dollar company or a vendor selling wares on the street for a couple of bucks, what they always say and should say is “what we sell is the best”.

The businesses we are talking about, Cwicly, Bricks, Elementor, et all, are relatively small businesses compared to the public listed companies trading on the stock market and listed for hundreds of Millions/Billions of Dollars.

Tesla is one of the most shorted stocks in the world. People and news agencies write negative articles about it all the time. Why? Because they are from a rival network and they tend to make a lot of money if the stock falls as they are betting for the stock to fall, and are creating negative market sentiments by writing negative articles.

Tesla/XYZ company occasionally issues a press release to clarify the criticism.

What Tesla or any company to whom such criticism is directed to doesn’t do is invite the short sellers, debate them and beg them to stop writing negative stories or validate their claims that ‘Tesla/XYZ company is the Second Best”.

If you have ever built a business for yourself or your clients, I trust you know that building a business is an extremely demanding and risky endeavour.

You get your first customer and over a period of time you build a community of customers.

This is a prized possession, the proverbial city of Troy, and must be guarded against outside attacks.

The person writing negative articles on any company and calling them “The Second Best” is neither a friend nor a well wisher, and in all likelihood, that person has nefarious motives and vested interests elsewhere, and the proverbial gates of the city of Troy must be kept shut to such a person/news agency/short seller, because if you let the Trojan Horse in, it’s game over.

Louis from Breakdance kept the proverbial gates closed, while Louis from Cwicly opened the gates and exposed all his customers to an outsider opinion that users shouldn’t care much about the Tailwind integration and Cwicly was the “Second Best page-builder”.

The right strategy for Louis from Cwicly would have been to destroy Kevin’s arguments in front of Kevin’s audience on Kevin’s YouTube channel, not the other way around, by letting Kevin destroy Cwicly on Cwicly’s YouTube channel.

There is a reason the story of Troy and the Trojan Horse has become a legend in folklore, it has happened time and again.

Cheers!

37

A “Second Best page builder” from 1 youtuber. Even then 2nd place is still pretty good. The company would just have to work their way up to best page builder understandably. Even then it’s an alternative and a choice given to consumers. Some people don’t like bricks so “First Best page builder” opinion from a single youtuber doesn’t matter. Another thing is if features are expanded on and quality improved to the “Second Best page builder” then it will be constantly competing with bricks. Which is honestly great because I would like bricks to have a competitor.
And if something wild happens to bricks that compromises the integrity of builder then people will jump onto to the next best alternative which would be the “Second Best Builder”… which would make its way to the “First Best Builder”.

All in all… it’s not that deep.

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38

Bricks has found its legs in the market and is now well established.
It’s not going to run out of business.
Elementor is pretty established, and is not going to run out of business.

The Go-to-Market strategy for any new and rival pagebuilder cannot be that “Let’s hope Bricks dies or Elementor dies and till that time let us accept the label of the ‘Second Best Pagebuilder’”

There are and always will be features that one page builder has that the other doesn’t, or even if they both have the same features, the implementation might be different, or the depth of features might vary.

The crux of my argument - No Business must ever accept or acknowledge that their Product/Service is the “Second Best” from any third party. The only acknowledgment must be that their Product/Service is the Best.

Anyhow, I agree with you, and at the risk of repeating myself and my original comment, the best course of action for Cwicly would have been to ignore attacks by Kevin and keep the proverbial gates shut, issue clarifications on their own channels to their own customers, and if at all a counter-attack has got to be launched, Louis should have gone to Kevin’s Youtube channel and destroyed Kevin’s attack in front of Kevin’s audience.

Water under the Bridge.

Cheers!

39

The problem with all this theorizing is that you can’t prove it effected even one customer or potential customer.
All the people already using Cwicly would be perfectly happy seeing it grow and thrive and update. All the people already sold on some other builder aren’t looking to swap anyway. All the people who haven’t chosen any product are not going to be so shallow or naive as to think some random Bricks user calling it “second best” in an obscure single YouTube video, or in his private walled community is going to throw off their opinion and research.
Every product cannot present themselves as “the best” for some silly marketing game. Every fast food company can’t be “the best”. According to who? On what metrics?
There is no “the best” page builder. According to who? For what purpose? What metrics? These are all just opinions and everyone knows it. One person’s “best” is not everyone’s “best”. All competing products can’t be “the best” so pretending they have to be thought of that way is childish.

Where is the real world example of this actually happening? Cwicly didn’t shut down because growth was slow because one guy called them second best. They lost passion for it, and that happens.

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40

Nobody has ever ciritized a product on the Internet before this. :slightly_smiling_face:

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