I've now got 2 themes on WordPress.com - Mimbo Pro and Opti - and as such I have spent quite a lot of time on the site. WordPress.com is powered by WordPress - but it also has a lot of custom plugins sitting on top of it making it a lot more flexible and useable for the average user. A lot of the functionality on there is not needed for the average user - but at the same time there's some cool functionality that many blogs could take use of.
This functionality has now been wrapped up into a plugin that has just hit version 2 - Jetpack.
Jetpack Notifications
The killer feature for me is that Jetpack includes notifications. These are a little 'blip' in the top right of your website that shows you what is happening on your blog - mostly showing new comments. This on it's own isn't that big of a feature. The big improvement is in the fact that it links your websites together. Every WordPress site you have an account on that has Jetpack installed will show up on here.
So - I have the plugin on Binary Moon, and Binary Joy, and WordPress Vote, and Pro Theme Design - and a number of blogs on WordPress.com and Jetpack has connected them all together. I can see the comments and interactions of any of this small community whilst browsing just one of the sites.
Jetpack Stats
Stats are another element of Jetpack that I like. Now I know I can use Google Analytics - and of course I do - but for simple stats Jetpack is great. And one bonus of them is that they don't rely on cookies and so count everyone making it a little more accurate. This functionality used to be available as the 'WordPress Stats' plugin - but has now been merged into Jetpack.
Jetpack Site Subscriptions
The next bonus I wanted to mention is the site subscriptions. This is the ability for users to subscribe to site updates (both comments, and new blog posts). The Jetpack team use the WordPress.com infrastructure to send the emails meaning that you don't have to rely on emails being sent from your web server. This replaces the ageing subscribe to comments plugin.
Anything else?
There's actually loads of functionality included with Jetpack - you are able to toggle on and off all the different features so that you just use what you require.
I really like having the ability to merge all of my web properties into one - and utilising the power of wordpress.com is a great addition.
It didn't get as much attention, but I'm excited for the WordPress.com JSON API integration in Jetpack that happened in version 1.9 - http://jetpack.me/.../jetpack-1-9-toolbar-notifications/
November 20, 2012
Yeah - I must admit I don't really understand how it can be used - and I suspect others are the same which is why it wasn't publicised so much.
I think we need some developers to make use of it and then people will realise the power inside. When products start making use of it is when people will appreciate it's use IMO.
November 20, 2012
I have heard of this plugin but do not use it. I have heard lots of good things about this plugin. Does Jetpack count your own views into its stats. I think in analytics, you can block your own views.
December 15, 2012
by default it doesn't track your own views, but I think you can enable them if you want
December 16, 2012
Hey Ben, thanks for that. In that case I might install this plugin. Thanks for your answer. Also the ability for users to subscribe to updates is an added bonus. Sounds like a very good plugin.
December 16, 2012
I've recently installed Jetpack on a couple of sites this month. I do like the way you can turn on/off the bits you want/don't need so it doesn't seem to create too much bloat to the loading. The new Tiles for galleries looks fun to play with.
January 15, 2013