Automattic
 | |
| Private | |
| Industry | Internet |
| Founded | August 2005 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California |
Key people | Matt Mullenweg (Founder, CEO, president) |
| Products |
WordPress.com Akismet Gravatar Cloudup Polldaddy VaultPress VideoPress IntenseDebate Plinky WordPress.com VIP After the Deadline Simplenote WooCommerce WooThemes |
Number of employees | 511 |
| Website | automattic.com |
Automattic, Inc. is a web development corporation founded in August 2005. It is most notable for WordPress.com (a free blogging service), as well as its contributions to WordPress (open source blogging software). The company's name plays on its founder's first name, Matt.
The company has 478 employees.[1] Its culture was the topic of a participative journalism project by Scott Berkun, entitled The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work.[2]
Automattic raised US$317.3 million in five funding rounds. In the last round, on May 2014, the company was valued at US$1.16 billion USD.[3]
Projects
Other projects include:
- After the Deadline – online proofreading tool
- Akismet – anti-comment spam system capable of integration with many blogging platforms and forums
- bbPress – forum software
- blo.gs – RSS feed aggregator
- BuddyPress – social networking plugin suite
- Cloudup – file sharing application
- Ping-O-Matic – pinging service
- GlotPress – collaborative translation tool
- Gravatar – globally recognized avatars
- IntenseDebate – a blog comment hosting service that was launched as a private beta in January 2007 by Co-Founders Jon Fox, Isaac Keyet, and Josh Morgan,[4] and launched as an open beta on October 30, 2007. On September 23, 2008, Automattic announced its acquisition of IntenseDebate's properties,[5] and returned to private beta until November of that year.In 2007, IntenseDebate was selected to be part of the first class of Techstars, a Boulder, Colorado based startup accelerator.
- Longreads – journalism aggregator[6]
- PollDaddy – polls and survey tools
- Poster – A blogging app for IOS[7]
- Simplenote – note-taking and sync service based on another Automattic project simperium.com
- Scroll Kit – A code-free web design tool[8]
- WordPress.com VIP – enterprise services for WordPress websites
- VaultPress – backup and security service for WordPress sites
- VideoPress – hosted HD video for WordPress sites
- Jetpack by WordPress.com – WordPress.com features for WordPress.org sites
- WooThemes – Premium WordPress Themes, Plugins & eCommerce
- WooCommerce – WordPress eCommerce
Automattic's employees include Matthew Mullenweg and Ryan Boren, two of the primary developers of WordPress.
On January 11, 2006, it was announced that Toni Schneider would be leaving Yahoo! to become CEO of Automattic. He was previously CEO of Oddpost before it was acquired by Yahoo!, where he had continued as a senior executive.[9][10]
In April 2006, it was revealed, through a Regulation D filing, that Automattic raised approximately $1.1 million in funding,[11] which Mullenweg addressed in his blog. Investors were Polaris Ventures, True Ventures, Radar Partners, and CNET.
On September 23, 2008, Automattic announced acquiring IntenseDebate.[12] Two months later, on November 15, 2008, Automattic acquired PollDaddy.[13]
On September 9, 2010, Automattic gave the WordPress trademark and control over bbPress and BuddyPress to the WordPress Foundation.[14]
On May 19, 2015, Automattic announced the acquisition of WooThemes, including their flagship product WooCommerce.[15]
References
- ↑ About Us - Automattic
- ↑ Scott Berkun (10 September 2013). The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work. Wiley. ISBN 978-1-118-66063-8.
- ↑ Kara Swisher (May 5, 2014). "WordPress.com Parent Automattic Raises $160 Million, Valued at $1.16 Billion". Re/Code.
- ↑ Intense Debate Soups Up Your Blog Comments
- ↑ Automattic Acquires IntenseDebate
- ↑ Longreads Is Joining the Automattic Family
- ↑
- ↑
- ↑ Yahoo Exec Exits For Automattic CEO Gig – GigaOM
- ↑ Moving On From Yahoo -> Automattic « Toni’s Garage Archived November 14, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.
- ↑ Company Information: AUTOMATTIC INC
- ↑ Automattic Acquires IntenseDebate
- ↑ Automattic Acquires PollDaddy!
- ↑ A New Home for the WordPress Trademark
- ↑ WooThemes Joins Auttomattic
External links
- Official website
- Automattic companies grouped at OpenCorporates
- On a mission to democratise publishing - Matt Mullenweg interview - The Guardian, September 2013
- Blog post by Mullenweg addressing the Regulation D filing
- Blog post by Mullenweg about the WooThemes/WooCommerce acquisition
- IntenseDebate