Matt Mullenweg | |
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Born | Matthew Charles Mullenweg January 11, 1984 Houston, Texas, U.S. |
Education | University of Houston |
Occupations |
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Organization | Automattic |
Known for | Co-founding WordPress |
Title |
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Website | ma |
Matthew Charles Mullenweg (born January 11, 1984) is an American web developer and entrepreneur. He is known as a co-founder of the free and open-source web publishing software WordPress and the founder of Automattic.
Mullenweg was born in Houston, Texas, and grew up in the Willowbend neighborhood. [4] His father, Chuck, was a computer programmer. Mullenweg was raised Catholic. [5] He attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts to play the saxophone, [6] although he was frequently absent due to chronic migraines. After graduating from high school, he studied economics, philosophy and political science at the University of Houston, eventually dropping out after his sophomore year in 2004. [7] [8] [9]
Mullenweg became enamored with blogging and started contributing updates to b2—a popular open-source blogging software—in 2002. However, Michel Valdrighi—the sole maintainer—soon ceased activity, and Mullenweg discussed prospects of creating a fork with other contributors; [6] thus, in January 2003, Mullenweg created WordPress with Mike Little under the GPL v2-or-later open-source license [10] at the age of 19, and Valdrighi endorsed the project a few months later. [11] [9]
In March 2003, he co-founded the Global Multimedia Protocols Group (GMPG) with Eric A. Meyer and Tantek Çelik. In April 2004, he helped launch Ping-O-Matic, a mechanism for notifying search engines about blog updates. [12]
In October 2004, he was hired by CNET who would allow him to develop WordPress part-time as part of his job. He dropped out of college and moved to San Francisco for the position. [13]
Mullenweg left CNET in October 2005 to focus on WordPress full-time. [14] Soon after he announced Akismet, an initiative to reduce comment and trackback spam. [15] In December, he founded Automattic, with Akismet and managed web hosting service WordPress.com as its flagship products. In January 2006, Mullenweg recruited former Yahoo! executive Toni Schneider to join Automattic as CEO. [16]
Since 2006, he has delivered an annual "State of the Word" speech on the progress and future of the WordPress software, named after the State of the Union address. [17] [18]
In 2011, Mullenweg purchased the WordPress news website WP Tavern. [19] [20]
In January 2014, Mullenweg became CEO of Automattic. Schneider moved to work on new projects at Automattic. [1] Mullenweg received the Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment in 2016, for "helping to democratize online publishing". [21]
Mullenweg began a three-month sabbatical from his role as CEO at the beginning of February 2024. [22] Later that month, Mullenweg engaged in a public feud with a transgender Tumblr user who, frustrated with the site's failure to address transphobic harassment, posted that she wished Mullenweg would die in a comedic way. The user was subsequently banned. Responding to user uproar, Mullenweg addressed the ban in posts on his personal Tumblr blog, in which he characterized the post as a death threat, and shared private account information about the user. Mullenweg also responded to individual commenters on Tumblr in posts and direct messages, and went to Twitter to respond to the banned user's tweets about the situation. [23] [24] A few days later, transgender employees of Tumblr and Automattic made a post on the official Tumblr staff blog characterizing his response as "unwarranted and harmful" and stating that he did not speak on their behalf. They also said that the user's post was not a realistic threat of violence and not the reason for her ban. [25]
On several occasions, Mullenweg has publicly challenged competitors to WordPress and WordPress.com. He has stated that he prefers to settle disputes in the court of public opinion and described his approach as "brinksmanship", noting that the potential cost of legal action could put Automattic in a "tough spot". [6]
In 2008, shortly before WordPress 2.5's release, Six Apart's Movable Type published "A WordPress 2.5 Upgrade Guide"—a comparison of their CMS with their rival, WordPress—as a company blog article that Mullenweg characterized as "desperate and dirty". [26] [27] [28] In 2013, developers on the digital marketplace Envato were banned from speaking at WordPress events after he criticized the platform for selling WordPress themes with the graphics and CSS components under a proprietary license instead of the GPL. [29]
In 2016, Mullenweg accused Wix.com, a competitor to WordPress.com, of reusing WordPress's mobile text editor code in Wix's own mobile app without adhering to the terms of the GPL. Despite the license's requirement to publish anything built with GPL code under the GPL, Wix's CEO claimed that the company open-sourced their forked version of the component and satisfied the license's terms [30] [31] before the app switched to its own fork of the MIT-licensed text editor that the WordPress editor was based upon. The new fork added a clause to the MIT license that forbids redistribution under any other license. [32]
In 2022, Mullenweg criticized GoDaddy for not reinvesting in the WordPress project sufficiently. [33]
During the week preceding September 22, 2024, Matt Mullenweg—founder of WordPress.com—began attacking rival WP Engine, starting with a speech at WordCamp US 2024 that outlined WP Engine's meager contributions to WordPress compared to Automattic, criticized WP Engine's significant ties to private equity, and called for a boycott, sparking internet controversy. [34] In response, WP Engine issued a cease and desist against what it characterized as defamation and extortion, attributing his attacks to WP Engine's refusal to pay Automattic "a significant percentage of its gross revenues – tens of millions of dollars in fact – on an ongoing basis" for what it claimed were necessary trademark licensing fees (later clarified as 8% of all revenue, payable in gross or in salaries for its own employees working under WordPress.org's direction, combined with a clause that would've prohibited forking [35] ) for the "WordPress" name. [36] Automattic responded by sending its own cease and desist the next day, citing the trademark issue. [37] On October 2, 2024, WP Engine sued Automattic and Mullenweg for extortion and abuse of power, which the defendants denied. [35]
As a result, WordPress.org blocked WP Engine and affiliates from accessing its servers—which include security updates, the plugin and theme repository, and more—on September 25, 2024, a day after its trademark policy was updated [38] to ask against usage of WP "in a way that confuses people", listing WP Engine as an example. [39] Following backlash, access to WordPress.org was temporarily restored until October 1 to allow WP Engine to build its own mirror sites two days later, [40] [41] which the company did. [39] On the 12th, WordPress.org replaced the listing of WP Engine's Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin on the WordPress.org plugin directory with a fork called "Secure Custom Fields" citing a guideline that empowers the foundation to "make changes to a plugin, without developer consent, in the interest of public safety". [42]
On October 7, 2024, Mullenweg announced that 159 employees—8.4% of Automattic—had quit in a realignment effort in exchange for a severance package of $30,000 or six months of salary, whichever is higher, with the condition that the resigned would not be able to return. [43]Mullenweg is a principal at angel investment firm Audrey Capital, which he co-founded in 2008 alongside Naveen Selvadurai and Audrey Kim. [44]
As of 2024 [update] , the company lists investments in companies such as CoinDesk, MakerBot, Sonos, SpaceX, Ring, as well as software companies including Calm, Chartbeat, DailyBurn, Memrise, Genius, Nord Security and Telegram. It has also funded startups that provide services to web developers including Creative Market, GitLab, NPM, SendGrid, Stripe and Typekit. [44] From 2017 to 2019, Mullenweg also served as a board member for GitLab. [45]
Mullenweg has employed a team of contributors to WordPress through Audrey Capital since 2010, who work separately from Automattic. [46] [47]
On the 20th anniversary of WordPress' initial release, Mullenweg announced a scholarship program aimed at the children of significant contributors to open-source projects. To remain in the program, participants must commit annually to a set of principles. [48]
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.
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.
In blogging, a ping is an XML-RPC-based push mechanism by which a weblog notifies a server that its content has been updated. An XML-RPC signal is sent from the weblog to one or more Ping servers, as specified by originating weblog), to notify a list of their "Services" of new content on the weblog.
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.
Automattic Inc. is an American global distributed company which was founded in August 2005 and is most notable for WordPress.com, as well as its contributions to WordPress. The company's name is a play on founder Matt Mullenweg's first name and the word "automatic".
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.
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.
Wix.com Ltd. or simply “Wix” 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.
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.
Vanilla is a Canadian software company founded in 2009 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is both a cloud-based (SaaS) community forum software and an open source community supported software. The company's main product is Vanilla Cloud.
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.
Mike Little is an English web developer and writer. He is the co-founder of the free and open source web publishing software WordPress.
Webflow, Inc. is an American company, based in San Francisco, that provides software as a service for website building and hosting. Their online visual editor platform allows users to design, build, and launch websites similar to Metaconex or Wix. According to W3Techs, Webflow is used by 0.6% of the top 10 million websites.
Yoast SEO is a search engine optimization (SEO) tool plug-in for WordPress.
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.
The fediverse is a collection of social networking services that can communicate with each other using a common protocol. Users of different websites can send and receive status updates, multimedia files and other data across the network. The term fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".
ActivityPub is a protocol and open standard for decentralized social networking. It provides a client-to-server API for creating and modifying content, as well as a federated server-to-server (S2S) protocol for delivering notifications and content to other servers. ActivityPub has become the main standard used in the fediverse, a popular network used for social networking that consists of software such as Mastodon, Pixelfed and PeerTube.
Openverse is an open-source search engine for open content developed as part of the WordPress project. It searches Creative Commons licensed and public domain content from dozens of different sources. The software is licensed under the MIT License.
WP Engine is an American hosting company that provides hosting services for websites built on the open-source content management system WordPress. It was founded by Jason Cohen in 2010 and is headquartered in Austin, Texas.
Matt grew up in Meyer Park/Willowbend
It wasn't until May 20th, 2013 when everyone was informed as to who the new owner was. It was none other than Matt Mullenweg.