WordPress.com Creator Raises $29.5M – GigaOM
I started blogging on Blogger in 2001, but Om Malik talked me into hosting my own WordPress install in 2003. I haven’t looked back since. I would declare WordPress to be the single best piece of software-technology-platform I have experienced in 30 years of fooling around with software — and that includes XyWrite (wordprocessor for pros in the DOS days), Civilization II (Sid Meier’s strategy game classic), and every other online service with the possible exception of Google Search.
If anyone asks me what to do when they need to open a blog, I send them to wordpress.com. Automattic, the parent company, just raised its series B. If I were looking for a smart acquisition, Automattic would be on the short list. This technology has done more to revolutionize content creation and production, and democratized it, than anything previously seen.
“It is quite an event for the company, which began with Matt mucking around with code in his Houston bedroom. As one of the first adopters of WordPress, I got to know Matt well, yelling at him for not fixing bugs (which I still do) and always telling him what “features to add.†He took note of all it, and some of those features have actually shown up in the software. Eventually he moved out to San Francisco and started Automattic.”
Not to quibble but Civ II was better. (Moment of silence for turn-based games.)