Rich Collier

  • Web of the Future

    The last month has been “Radical Speed Month” at Automattic. Unlimited AI token budget, no bureaucracies, and no constraints. Pick something to work on, pick a partner, build and ship something in one month.

    I paired up with James Grierson, a long-time coworker and someone I trust to help with big ideas. And our idea was big! Choosing to help envision the foundation of the future of the open web is no small task, especially within a month. But I’m happy to announce we’ve done just that! Let explain the idea, the philosophy, and what we shipped.

    Idea and philosophy

    The open web philosophy has always been about a decentralized, accessible, and user-empowered Internet. I can’t pretend to know what the future of the open web will actually be, how it will function, or what it will look like.

    But I do know a couple things. It will be about trust. It will be about controlling your own algorithm. It will be about privacy. And we must demand transparency from the big-boxes before we give them our data.

    As an open source community, we have to get going on this! We have to actually get started somewhere. The ideas we’ve explored here may or may not be the actual future. But it’s a starting point. Who better than Automattic and WordPress to help establish what the future of the open web should look like?

    A bold assertion

    I hereby declare that the website of the future should work a lot like the website of today works! A user will build a site on a web host of their choice, create or use a design (perhaps all AI empowered!), and they’ll publish content on pages and posts.

    The radical change comes in at the interface to that website. As a consumer of the content on the web, augmented by AI, users will demand both control and privacy. That control will likely be enacted in many ways, but I’ll introduce you to the first way.

    The “User Model”

    Are you a text skimmer who likes to click on links and go down rabbit-holes? Do you prefer humor when you read posts, or do you like long form no-nonsense content? Why is it up the publisher to demand that you consume content in their style of writing?

    Side note – but doesn’t this kill soul of the art of writing somehow? Yes. I think so! That’s something we have to figure out. But ultimately, the control should be in the hands of the user, the consumer, the reader. Maybe we give them the option to consume certain brands natively. I certainly don’t have all the answers.

    Imagine a small, portable, machine interpretable model – a description of you, your interests, your geographical location, and your content consumption preferences. You generate this model on-device, and provide it (or certain parts) only to the services you trust – and/or – it gets used for local inference on content served to you by the website.

    The user model is both binary-packable in a tight specification, or JSON-packable for web portability. It contains three main sections

    • The fingerprint – metadata, checksum bits, model versioning.
    • Style vectors – 8-bit integer packed spectrums for preferences about how you consume content – things like “serious vs humorous“, “skimmable vs immersive“, or “simple vs technical“.
    • Interest embedding strands – a list of floating point numbers in n-dimensions used to describe your interests, packed with a header that describes both generating model and length, so that the user model can be portable in strict binary.

    The model is open-specification, open-source, uniform, easy to generate and easy to consume and apply. I’ll open-source the specification we developed soon, likely as part of the Aurora project detailed below.

    User Model Applications

    We spent a lot of time brainstorming uses for the user model. I’ll list out a few that we tinkered with here.

    Aurora

    Aurora is the codename for a “web-browser-like” OSX native application that I built, which can generate the user-model on device, and provide it to services selected by the user. The model also gets used to interpret the user’s behavior on sites they visit. The model would theoretically be self-updating, so that it learns your preferences over time and tailors the experience of using the web to your liking to make you more productive or entertained.

    Again, the model is generated and lives on-device. LLM inference can even take place directly on-device. The app is currently capable of loading both local LLM models and Nomic embedding models directly on the machine. No dependency on OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google for inference for private data and preferences.

    Just imagine for a moment visiting a site like Facebook or (insert your “news” site preference here) and having the site actually deliver you the content you want to see, in a format that’s best for you. Maybe you’re on the move with your earbuds in, and you want that content delivered in podcast style. Maybe the AIs of the future can turn that content into shortform video in near realtime and cast to your TV. These are some of the ideas and goals here.

    Future web host compatibility

    Is it possible that in the future, your user model will be binary-packed and delivered to websites you trust, and then used for on-the-fly inference against the content that the site is delivering to you? That gives the user control and flexibility with their preferences and content interests, but also allows web hosts or other web sites the flexibility to do things like deliver advertisements, or special features tailored for AI users.

    I thought deeply about implementing this into Jetpack as a possible service, but with only a month to work on this, I didn’t have time to materialize it. But this is a possibility for the future – providing this functionality to websites without their host needing to be compatible. This could be done now.

    Content selection and readability

    For content aggregators, like the WordPress.com Reader (one of my favorite Automattic creations!), imagine finding highly relevant blog posts without having to dig so hard for the right blogs. Imagine seeing relevant content without having to subscribe to a bunch of blogs. And then imagine that content being delivered to you summarized to your liking. That’s the future of the web. And I do believe that this concept of a “user model” will be a cornerstone of it. It’s technical and complex right now, but mark my words, AI will make it transparent and easy over the coming years.

    What we shipped

    • reada.blog – The advertising/marketing site for the Reada.blog app.
    • my.reada.blog – A web app for interacting with the WordPress.com Reader, but with user-model integration and a Smart Feed which selects and tailors content for you.
    • Reada.Blog App – We built Reada.Blog as a native app for iPhone, but unfortunately the Apple store is very backed up with submissions, so we aren’t shipping this yet. Instead, we shipped the web app, which is less ideal, but embodies the proof of concept we aimed for.
    • Aurora – I’m not ready to open-source this yet, but will be doing so as soon as I’m ready. My gut tells me this is the best example of the future of the web, so I want to get it right. I’m going to continue to work on this in my free time, and will aim to release it as an Automattic product by the end of the year.

    Conclusion

    This project was ambitious, and I’m not going to lie – getting something shipped was way harder than I thought it would be. But I’m proud of what we did ship, and I’m so excited to continue this work in some capacity.

    I believe in the open web. It made me who I am. And I simply cannot fathom a future for my children where they are only distracted, entertained, and sold to – instead of educated and empowered, like my generation was. This is something we all should be fighting for.

  • Great Sand Dunes, Medano Pass, and Zapata Falls

    I took a weekend trip with the boys down to the Great Sand Dunes National Park, the southern part of Medano Pass, and Zapata Falls, which was frozen still. It’s wild to think the temperature was above 90 at the desert floor and below freezing at the falls!

    The dunes are really a treasure. As always, pictures don’t do it justice – the place takes hours to drive a circle around. It’s enormous!

    Medano Pass is pretty special too. We didn’t have the time to do the whole drive, and I think the center part is closed for the season still – but we’ll be back to do some more exploring and camping in the summer.

  • Share what you cherish

    Share what you cherish

    Automattic holds a monthly internal town hall where everyone gets together, shares their work, asks questions of our CEO, and occasionally participates in team building exercises. Yesterday we held the November installment, which was packed full of excitement.

    Led by Akshay Kapur, head of our coaching team, we performed a brief exercise called “Share What You Cherish.” We were all asked to bring an item that we cherish for inspiration to the town hall. As a sentimental person, I chose to bring some pictures of my kids. Above all else, I cherish the memories and experiences we’ve shared, and this felt right.

    Part 1

    During the exercise, we were asked to reflect on how we could cherish ourselves, our work, and our peers with the same sense of pride that we feel for our items. I did some internal digging and came up with the following:

    Myself

    I should cherish who I am and love myself with the same depth and care that I tend to apply to everyone around me. I put a great deal of energy into taking care of others—ensuring that everyone is happy, healthy, and has the things they want in front of them. Side note – this has led to mistakes in my life, large and small. Ultimately, I need to redirect some of that energy inward and care for myself by cherishing who I am.

    My work

    The good news here is that I very much cherish my work already. While some of the individual tasks I work on every day can be less than thrilling, I always approach them with an understanding of how they add up to a better product for our customers, and a better world for us all. And I adore our products. Using WordPress is one of my happy places, and helping build it is one of my proudest accomplishments.

    How can I expand on this a bit? I definitely need to use WordPress as a blog more often. Don’t get too technical with it—just write words. So here I am.

    My peers & colleagues

    There are two things here—one philosophical and one practical. I am a born leader. Though I often shy away from using those skills formally, it’s unavoidable that I present as a leader, and my peers and co-workers look to me for that. I should raise my hand more often.

    As for the practical thing? I’m a bit of a code-review dud sometimes. It’s not that I don’t believe in the process—I do. It’s more that I love to ship fast and break things, and sometimes code review can get in the way of that philosophy. I need to force myself to be more comfortable and respect my team’s efforts by putting my own effort and leadership into giving appropriate feedback. This is my commitment to do better.

    Part 2

    Akshay also asked us to reflect on what we cherish this year, and what we will cherish next year.

    This year, I have cherished a closer relationship with my sons. 2025 has been the hardest year ever for our family, with some things being broken apart—but from this, stronger bonds have been built between my kids and me. I cherish those bonds.

    Next year I look to further strengthen those bonds with my children, and rebuild some strained bonds with the rest of my extended family, from whom I have strayed too far.

  • Blue state, red aurora

    Blue state, red aurora

  • Food Photos: Mexico City

  • Food Photos: Dublin, Ireland

  • Food Photo: Full English Breakfast

  • Food Photos: Athens, Greece

  • Street Cats of Athens

    Athens, the capital city of Greece, is a place where street cats reign supreme. They can be seen on almost every corner, sunbathing on ancient ruins or searching for food scraps. These felines have become an integral part of the city’s landscape, bringing joy and companionship to many residents and visitors alike. Despite their stray status, the street cats of Athens are well-looked after by locals, with many offering food and water to help them survive. These cats have become an icon of Athens’ unique culture, making the city all the more charming.

  • Empty Parthenon