Automattic

Last updated

Automattic Inc.
Company type Private
Industry
  • Internet
  • Web Development
  • Software
Founded2005;19 years ago (2005), in the United States
Founder Matt Mullenweg
Headquarters San Francisco, California, US
Key people
 Matt Mullenweg (CEO, president)
Products
Number of employees
1,934 (January 2024) [1]
ASN 2635 OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Website automattic.com

Automattic Inc. is an American global distributed company which was founded in August 2005 and is most notable for WordPress.com (a freemium blogging service), as well as its contributions to WordPress (an open source blogging software). The company's name is a play on founder Matt Mullenweg's first name and the word "automatic". [2]

Contents

History

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. [3] [4]

In April 2006, Automattic's Regulation D filing showed it had raised approximately $1.1 million in funding, [5] which Mullenweg addressed in his blog. Investors were Polaris Ventures, True Ventures, and Radar Partners. [2]

On September 9, 2010, Automattic gave the WordPress trademark and control over bbPress and BuddyPress to the WordPress Foundation. [6]

Its remote working culture was the topic of a participative journalism project by Scott Berkun, resulting in the 2013 book The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work. [7]

On November 21, 2016, Automattic, via a subsidiary company (Knock Knock, WHOIS There) managed the launch and later development of the .blog gTLD, thus becoming a domain registrar. [8]

The former office of Automattic at 140 Hawthorne Street in San Francisco n July 2017 (since closed) Automattic Inc. office, San Francisco (July 2017) -3.jpg
The former office of Automattic at 140 Hawthorne Street in San Francisco n July 2017 (since closed)

In 2017, Automattic announced that it would close its San Francisco office, which had served as an optional co-working space for its employees alongside similar spaces near Portland, Maine and in Cape Town, South Africa. [9]

In August 2019, Automattic closed a deal with Verizon Media to acquire Tumblr. [10] Mullenweg stated that he saw Tumblr as an "on-ramp" for WordPress adoption. [11]

In September of the same year, Automattic announced a Series D funding round of $300 million from Salesforce, increasing its valuation to US$3 billion. [12]

Ending in February 2021, Automattic brought in US$288 million from a primary funding round. Subsequently, the company participated in a stock buyback, with the company valued at US$7.5 billion. [13]

In February 2024, Automattic announced that it would begin selling user data from Tumblr and WordPress.com to Midjourney and OpenAI. [14]

Products

Some notable Automattic brands and products include:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WordPress</span> Content management system

WordPress is a web content management system. It was originally created as a tool to publish blogs but has evolved to support publishing other web content, including more traditional websites, mailing lists and Internet forum, media galleries, membership sites, learning management systems and online stores. Available as free and open-source software, WordPress is among the most popular content management systems – it was used by 43.1% of the top 10 million websites as of December 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matt Mullenweg</span> American entrepreneur and web developer

Matthew Charles Mullenweg is an American entrepreneur and web developer. He is known for developing WordPress and founding Automattic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gravatar</span> Web service providing individuals with a "Globally Recognized Avatar"

Gravatar is a service for providing globally unique avatars and was created by Tom Preston-Werner. Since 2007, it has been owned by Automattic, having integrated it into their WordPress.com blogging platform.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salesforce</span> American software company

Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management (CRM) software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, e-commerce, analytics, and application development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WordPress.com</span> Blogging platform owned and hosted online by Automattic

WordPress.com is a web building platform for self-publishing that is popular for blogging and other works. It is owned and operated by Automattic, Inc. It is run on a modified version of the WordPress software. This website provides free blog hosting for registered users and is financially supported via paid upgrades, "VIP" services and advertising.

Akismet is a service that filters spam from comments, trackbacks, and contact form messages. The filter operates by combining information about spam captured on all participating sites and then using those spam rules to block future spam. Akismet is offered by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com. Akismet was launched on October 25, 2005.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Seesmic</span> Blog software

Seesmic was a suite of freeware web, mobile, and desktop applications which allowed users to simultaneously manage user accounts for multiple social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tumblr</span> Microblogging and social networking website

Tumblr is a microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by American company Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wix.com</span> Israeli software company

Wix.com Ltd. is an Israeli software company, publicly listed in the US, that provides cloud-based web development services. It offers tools for creating HTML5 websites and mobile sites using online drag-and-drop editing. Along with its headquarters and other offices in Israel, Wix also has offices in Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Lithuania, Poland, the Netherlands, the United States, Ukraine, and Singapore.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BuddyPress</span>

BuddyPress is an open-source social networking software package owned by Automattic since 2008. It is a plugin that can be installed on WordPress to transform it into a social network platform. BuddyPress is designed to allow schools, companies, sports teams, or any other niche community to start their own social network or communication tool.

HubSpot, Inc. is an American developer and marketer of software products for inbound marketing, sales, and customer service. HubSpot was founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah in 2006.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zendesk</span> American customer service software company

Zendesk, Inc. is a Danish-American company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides software-as-a-service products related to customer support, sales, and other customer communications. The company was founded in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2007. Zendesk raised about $86 million in venture capital investments before going public in 2014.

140 Proof is an advertising company that uses social data from many sources in targeting relevant ads based on consumers' interests as indicated by their social activity across networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WooCommerce</span> Open source plugin for WordPress

WooCommerce is an open-source e-commerce plugin for WordPress. It is designed for small to large-sized online merchants using WordPress. Launched on September 27, 2011, the plugin quickly became popular for its simplicity to install and customize and for the market position of the base product as freeware. WooCommerce is developed and supported by Woo and includes contributions from a global community of developers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Day One (app)</span> Smartphone and desktop app for journaling

Day One is a personal journaling app available for Android, macOS and iOS devices. Some features include: data syncing with multiple devices; end-to-end encryption, Markdown authoring of entries; location, weather, date, time, and other automatic metadata; quick entry menu bar ; and reminders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yahoo! Inc. (2017–present)</span> American technology company

Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational technology company that focuses on media and online business. It is the second and current incarnation of the company, after Verizon Communications acquired the core assets of its predecessor and merged them with AOL in 2017. The resulting subsidiary entity was briefly called Oath Inc. In December 2018, Verizon announced it would write down the combined value of its purchases of AOL and Yahoo! by $4.6 billion, roughly half; the company would be renamed Verizon Media the following month in January 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fediverse</span> Network of federated social media servers

The fediverse is a collection of social networking servers which can communicate with each other, while remaining independently controlled from each other. Users on different social networks and websites can send and receive status updates, multimedia and other files to and from others across the network.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ActivityPub</span> Decentralized social networking protocol

ActivityPub is an open, decentralized social networking protocol based on Pump.io's ActivityPump protocol. It provides a client/server API for creating, updating, and deleting content, as well as a federated server-to-server API for delivering notifications and content.

References

  1. ↑ "About Us". Automattic. July 23, 2005. Archived from the original on February 1, 2024. Retrieved February 1, 2024.
  2. 1 2 Morrison, Chris (October 19, 2021). "How doing everything wrong turned Automattic into a multibillion dollar media powerhouse". TechCrunch. Retrieved March 31, 2024.
  3. ↑ Malik, Om (January 11, 2006). "Yahoo Exec Exits For Automattic CEO Gig". gigaom.com. Archived from the original on September 20, 2017. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  4. ↑ Moving On From Yahoo -> Automattic Archived November 14, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  5. ↑ "EDGAR Search Results". www.sec.gov. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  6. 1 2 "A New Home for the WordPress Trademark". September 9, 2010. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  7. ↑ Scott Berkun (September 10, 2013). The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work. Wiley. ISBN   978-1-118-66063-8.
  8. ↑ "About Knock Knock, WHOIS There". April 13, 2016. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  9. ↑ Staley, Oliver (June 12, 2017). "Wordpress's owner is closing its San Francisco office because its employees never show up". Quartz. Retrieved October 20, 2019.
  10. ↑ Radulovic, Petrana (August 12, 2019). "Tumblr sold off yet again, adult content bans to be relaxed, but are being discussed". Polygon . Retrieved August 12, 2019.
  11. ↑ Milano, Matt (August 23, 2023). "Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, Sees Tumblr As a Gateway Product". WebProNews. Retrieved February 29, 2024.
  12. ↑ "Automattic raises $300 million at $3 billion valuation from Salesforce Ventures". TechCrunch. September 19, 2019. Retrieved April 23, 2020.
  13. ↑ Matt Mullenweg (August 16, 2021). "Funding, Buyback, and Hiring".
  14. ↑ Cole, Samantha (February 27, 2024). "Tumblr and WordPress to Sell Users' Data to Train AI Tools". 404 Media. Retrieved February 28, 2024.
  15. ↑ "Automattic Acquires Gravatar". TechCrunch. October 18, 2007. Retrieved September 7, 2023.
  16. ↑ "Automattic Acquires IntenseDebate". September 23, 2008. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  17. ↑ "Automattic Acquires PollDaddy!". October 15, 2008. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  18. ↑ "Longreads Is Joining the Automattic Family". April 9, 2014. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  19. ↑ "WooThemes Joins Automattic". May 19, 2015. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  20. ↑ "Automattic, Parent Company of WordPress.com, Acquires Atavist Publishing Platform and Award-Winning Magazine". PR Newswire. June 21, 2018. Retrieved June 22, 2018.
  21. ↑ Shepherd, Brent (May 22, 2019). "A Final Prospress Post…". Prospress Blog. Archived from the original on May 24, 2019. Retrieved September 22, 2021.
  22. ↑ Dillet, Romain (May 23, 2019). "Automattic acquires subscription payment company Prospress". TechCrunch. Retrieved September 22, 2021.
  23. ↑ "Zero BS CRM acquired" (Press release). August 16, 2019.
  24. ↑ "Introducing Jetpack CRM: Grow Your Business Through Better Contact Management". Jetpack. Automattic. July 20, 2020. Archived from the original on July 21, 2020. Retrieved August 17, 2021.
  25. ↑ "Automattic Acquires Tumblr, Plans to Rebuild the Backend Powered by WordPress". August 13, 2019.
  26. ↑ "Parse.ly & Automattic". Matt Mullenweg. February 8, 2021. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  27. ↑ "WordPress.com owner Automattic acquires journaling app Day One". TechCrunch. Retrieved June 14, 2021.
  28. ↑ "Popular Podcast App Pocket Casts Joins Automattic – WordPress.com News". July 16, 2021.
  29. ↑ Pierce, David (October 24, 2023). "Automattic is acquiring Texts and betting big on the future of messaging". The Verge. Retrieved October 24, 2023.
  30. ↑ Pierce, David (April 9, 2024). "Beeper was just acquired by Automattic, which has big plans for the future of messaging". The Verge. Retrieved April 9, 2024.

Commons-logo.svg Media related to Automattic at Wikimedia Commons

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.