Automattic has just launched Jetpack, a new plugin which allows self-hosted WordPress users to enjoy several features previously available only to WordPress.com blogs.
Simply put, Jetpack is a vehicle to bring some of the best WordPress.com features to your self-hosted WordPress blog, and it’s launching today with Gravatar Hovercards, WordPress.com Stats, the Twitter widget, a wealth of cool shortcodes, Shortlinks, LaTeX markup, Sharedaddy, and After the Deadline.
Of course, these features are just the launch set. There are plenty more on the way, and all you need to do is watch for them to magically appear in your Jetpack panel.
Have you tried Jetpack yet? What do you think of it so far?
Disclaimer: I work for Automattic, Inc.
Technorati Tags: blog, blogger
Original post by James Huff
Technorati Tags: blog, blogger
Matt Mullenweg and Toni Schneider both whom are in attendance for the LeWeb 10 conference were recently interviewed by TechCrunch reporter, Alexia Tsotsis. The interview doesn’t go into much detail but we do get a glimpse as to how things are going for Automattic as a company. WordPress.com is getting about 300 million unique pageviews a month from 30 million publishers that make up 10% of the websites on the web. In terms of revenue, Automattic is breaking even but as a company, they make a little under $1 million per month with all services combined. TechCrunch figures that this equates to $10 million a year. Perhaps it’s just me but if that is correct, that number seems pretty low considering how large WordPress.com is.
However, the best part of the interview comes down to the final question regarding any potential exit potential for the company. Their response: “Our goal’s […]
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog
The Guardian has a great article online which features numerous quotes from PollDaddy co-founder and project lead David Lenehan on various business aspects of PollDaddy. In the article which is more like an interview, we learn that the company has been cash flow positive since the beginning with revenues doubling since they’ve started. When it comes to competition, there are less polling services available now then there were when PollDaddy launched. The biggest reason for selling to Automattic?
“It was more down to Automattic as a company.” said David Lenehan, now product lead for PollDaddy at Automattic. “We weren’t fussed about selling at the time and had lots of people that could have approached us that wouldn’t have raised our interest. But Automattic then only had 20 staff and an exciting product including WordPress.com, and our software was used a lot – 30-40% of our users were using WordPress.
“It was […]
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog
Akismet was one of Automattic’s first projects, and after 5 years of sporting the same design, the entire site has received a major facelift.
On first glance, the new site presents Akismet’s benefits in a much clearer way, and offers clearer distinction between the free and paid licenses. Fans of the old spam stats will probably notice that they are no longer featured on the front page, but fear not, they have just been moved to the About page.
Akismet’s anti-spam offerings have continue to grow dramatically over the last 5 years. What began as a single WordPress plugin is now available in 24 plugins and 14 libraries.
What do you think of Akismet’s redesign? Do you use Akismet on your blog? If not, how do you protect your blog from spam?
Technorati Tags: blog
Original post by James Huff
Technorati Tags: blog
Just a few days ago, I was trying to decide what to do with my significantly neglected WordPress.com blog, and I decided that I was going to start a food blog “just like everyone else on WordPress.com.” Well, it looks like I wasn’t alone in that far-reaching generalization.
Just in time for the food-filled fall and winter holidays, WordPress.com has launched the simply awesome and hunger-inspiring FoodPress.
FoodPress features the best food-related posts from WordPress.com’s network of over 14 million blogs. The posts are hand-picked “by scouring food-related tag pages like food, recipes, baking, cocktails, and more,” so don’t forget to tag your posts!
I hope that FoodPress is the first in a long line of GenrePressing WordPress.com blogs, and I hope that technology and photography are next.
What do you think of FoodPress, and what kind of GenrePressing blogs do you want to see next?
P.S. GenrePress – you heard it here first, though […]
Original post by James Huff
Technorati Tags: blog, technology
Automattic recently appeared on ICANN’s list of accredited registrars as ID #1531, meaning that the company is now a full-fledged accredited domain registrar.
WordPress.com is one of Automattic’s most popular services, and domain mapping is one of their most popular upgrades, so this is potentially yet another game-changing move for the company.
According to Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg, Automattic will continue to partner with GoDaddy until they have finished building tools to take advantage of their new registrar status over the next few months.
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Original post by James Huff
Technorati Tags: blog
Automattic has officially donated the WordPress trademark to the non-profit WordPress Foundation. To quote the official announcement by Jane Wells, “the Foundation will be responsible for safeguarding the trademarked name and logo from misuse toward the end of protecting WordPress and preventing confusion among people trying to figure out if a resource is ‘official’ or not.”
Matt Mullenweg is obviously excited, as “the most central piece of WordPress’s identity, its name, is now fully independent from any company.”
Ownership of the trademark could have made Automattic millions on the name alone, but in a move praised as “extremely generous and community-minded,” they are ensuring that both WordPress and its name will never be used to unfairly profit from, confuse, or cause harm to the blogging platform, its integrity, and the community itself.
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Technorati Tags: blog, blogger, blogging, feed
Original post by James Huff
Technorati Tags: blog, blogger, blogging, feed
I don’t see too many interviews with the CEO of Automattic Toni Schneider, conducted by people within the WordPress community so when I come across one, my interest is immediately grabbed. Dre Armeda who is one of the authors behind WPVibe.com had the unique opportunity to have Toni answer some of his questions about WordPress, Akismet, things they are working on, and one thing he’s learned as CEO of Automattic. One interesting bit of information I picked up out of the interview relates to PollDaddy:
PollDaddy has been growing really impressively as well. It reaches over 117 million people a month!
I imagine Toni is a pretty busy man but it’s nice to see him stop and chat with fellow members of the WordPress.org community.
Not related to the interview but if you are interested in reading about how Automattic came to exist and how Toni Schneider became CEO of Automattic, I suggest […]
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog
In the past few weeks, I’ve come across more and more websites which are in clear violation of the WordPress trademark, namely the domain requirements as outlined here. The simple thing to do when creating a website centered around WordPress is not to have the full name as part of the domain name. For example, fanofwordpress.com. Instead, it should be fanofwp.com. That’s not all that’s trademarked though as the WordPress logo is also registered.
Trademarked WordPress Logo
The description of the visual trademark according to the United Stats Patent and Trademark Office is as follows:
26.01.17 – Circles, two concentric; Concentric circles, two; Two concentric circles
26.01.21 – Circles that are totally or partially shaded.
26.17.13 – Letters or words underlined and/or overlined by one or more strokes or lines; Overlined words or letters; Underlined words or letters
If you need an official logo to use, this page on the WordPress.org website has quite a […]
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog
Stick around the WordPress community for a period of time and you’re bound to come across a few folks who say Automattic is an evil company or Matt Mullenweg is evil in the way in which he runs WordPress.org. The more time I spend talking to Matt and with other employees of Automattic, the more I don’t understand where these thoughts and feelings of evilness come from. Sure, there is a decision made from time to time that a vocal group of people disagree with but you can’t make the right decision 100% of the time. Let’s take a closer look at Automattic as it relates to WordPress.
When I interviewed Matt at WordCamp New York, one of the things I asked him to address is the notion that Automattic commercially benefits from those who work for free. This indeed happens but on the flip side, Automattic gives a ton back […]
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog
