PollDaddy Becomes Automattic
October 15, 2008
Polls were one of the features missing from WordPress.com as at the start of 2008. Automattic addressed this in May, when a shortcode to include PollDaddy polls became available.
Now Automattic has acquired PollDaddy. For more coverage, see posts at ReadWriteWeb, WordPress.com, and PollDaddy.
The latter post includes the three points familiar to those of us following Automattic acquisitions: great fit in terms of people working together; acquired service will be improved due to Automattic’s infrastracture; service will remain committed to multiple platforms, not just to WordPress. For example, PollDaddy commit to improving support for support for MySpace, Ning, Blogger, Typepad, etc.
Intense Debate Now Automattic
September 23, 2008
Automattic, the firm behind WordPress, has acquired Intense Debate, the firm behind… Intense Debate. The ID comment system fits neatly into Automattic’s range of projects.
In particular, ID fits between the WordPress blogging platform and the Akismet spam-fighting system. There have also been requests for ID at the hosted WordPress.com service; however, if the support forums are any guide, there have been more requests for Disqus, a comment system that competes with ID.
Jon of ID is excited about wider distribution and about integration of ID with the Automattic offerings. To balance that, he emphasized that ID will continue to work on other blogging platforms, such as Blogger and Movable Type. Similar points come from the Automattic side of the deal, from Matt and from Toni.
ID will remain a stand-alone service that can be used with WordPress as well as many other types of web sites (similar to the way we run our Akismet and Gravatar services). In addition, some ID features and technology will be built directly into future versions of WordPress and Gravatar.
It’ll be interesting to see how competing firms react. I’m thinking in particular of Disqus, which currently uses Akismet. In other words, one of its main competitors has just been acquired by the developer of a service it uses. Mashable Adam contacted Disqus, and his post includes a quote from CEO Daniel Ha, but there’s understandably little in the way of specifics.
Finally, the timing of Intensomattic deal is such that it’ll be overshadowed by the Google/T-mobile circus. That’s a pity, because it’s a significant change to the social media landscape.
Why the Fuss About Social Blogging?
August 15, 2008
Recent posts at ReadWriteWeb, at GigaOm, and elsewhere discuss the “social” direction that blogging is taking. The discussion seems strange, given that blogging has always been social.
One way of explaining it is that:
- Blogging is conversation (Naked or otherwise).
- Conversation = content + connection.
- There’s a current emphasis on connection. Connection is of course the defining feature of social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
- Connection is also a feature of blogging software, such as Movable Type and WordPress.
It is indeed on Movable Type and WordPress that the RWW and GOm posts focus. I’ll keep that focus, despite comments that Drupal and Elgg also belong in the conversation. But I’d like to make the comparison between Movable Type and WordPress, just as I’ve made elsewhere the comparison between Six Apart and Automattic, the respective firms behind MT and WP.
Here’s what Anil Dash of Six Apart recently announced.
Movable Type Pro lets you turn any site into a full social publishing platform, combining all of Movable Type’s abilities as a blogging and CMS with social networking features like profiles, ratings, user registration, forums, following, and more.
Six Apart offer three platforms: MT, TypePad, and Vox. There is no TypePad counterpart to MT Pro (although there is something called TypePad Pro). Vox is, and has been from the start, a “social blogging” platform, with its content and connection features sharing top billing.
While Six Apart offer three platforms, Automattic offer one: WordPress. While Six Apart’s MT Pro moves social networking up alongside blogging, Automattic’s BuddyPress moves social networking up in front of blogging: BuddyPress will move the main focus of WordPress MU away from blogs, and onto the actual member profile.
While MT Pro includes forums, BuddyPress doesn’t. That’s not because Automattic consider forums unimportant; it’s because they offer specialized forum software: bbPress.
Now to try and summarize the different ways in which the two blogging firms are increasing emphasis on connection. Six Apart offer social blogging in two forms: MT Pro for the enterprise, and Vox for the individual. Automattic offers blogging in the form of WordPress, and social networking in the form of BuddyPress.
Of course, summarize often means (over-)simplify, and there’s a lot of simplification above. For example, BuddyPress is essentially Multi-User WordPress plus plugins and themes, so the relative emphasis on content (blogging) and connection (social network) can be calibrated as appropriate.
I leave any further clarifications to this account of social blogging to comments…
Automattic Making Money: Contents and Conclusions
April 29, 2008
This post concludes my series on Automattic making money. The best structure for the post seems to be the time-honoured, time-based structure: past, present, and future.
I’ll start with a list of the past posts in this series.
- How is Automattic Going to Make Money? is the introduction to the series, which I posted almost two months ago now.
- Making Money From WordPress.com. This, the most successful post at this blog so far, is about how Automattic makes money from the WordPress.com service it hosts.
- Automattic Profits From WordPress, the open source software project.
- Automattic Making Money From Other Projects, such as Akismet.
Now, on to Automattic’s past. In some ways, there isn’t much of it, since the firm was founded in December 2005, and is often described as a startup. But there is more history than that might suggest. WordPress is the successor to b2/cafelog, which goes back to June 2001. One of the reasons this is important is that WordPress inherited from b2 its use of the GPL, and hence has always been free/open source software.
WordPress 1.0 was released in 2004. That same year, Yahoo acquired Toni Schneider’s startup, Oddpost, and so Toni joined Yahoo. While there, he founded the Yahoo developer network which allows third party software developers to use Yahoo as a platform for creating Yahoo-powered applications and services.
As CEO of Automattic, Toni has cultivated what might be termed the WordPress developer network, but is referred to as the WordPress ecosystem by shameless buzzword-slingers. This ecosystem includes WordPress consultants, theme developers, and plugin developers.
My main comment on the present is that things are changing fast. I’ll give an example of change for each of the following: WordPress.com, WordPress, and Akismet. Sonific is one of the means by which you can include music in a WordPress.com post. That will cease to be true on May 1, when Sonific is going offline.
WordPress 2.5 was released about a month ago. Its emphasis is on usability, but not everyone considers it an improvement. When WordPress.com moved to the 2.5 code base, there were complaints about the new admin interface, and about the suddenness of the change. Bloggers using WordPress (as opposed to .com) of course have more control over their blogs, including control over when to move to the new interface.
As a third and final example of recent change, consider Mollom. It’s a new competitor for Akismet, and will probably be a strong one.
If you read this far in the hope of finding bold predictions about Automattic’s future, you’re out of luck. If such predictions ever do come from me, they will probably get their own post. The best hint about the future, and hence the best closing sentence for this post and for the series, is one that Matt wrote after Automattic raised a second round of funding ($29.5M) earlier this year.
Automattic is now positioned to execute on our vision of a better web not just in blogging, but expanding our investment in anti-spam, identity, wikis, forums, and more — small, open source pieces, loosely joined with the same approach and philosophy that has brought us this far.
Automattic Profits From WordPress
March 28, 2008
This post is the third in the series that started by posing the question: How is Automattic Going to Make Money?. It follows on from my most popular post so far: Making Money From WordPress.com.
In this post, we’ll be looking at how Automattic profits from WordPress, the free/open source software project that lives at WordPress.org. We’ll consider WordPress Multi-User (WPMU) as a subproject of WordPress, just as it is a subsite of WordPress.org.
To find sources of revenue for Automattic from WordPress, we’ll crawl around the relevant web sites. We won’t start from any particular framework for “making money from open source” or “open source business models.” If you want to read up on the more general stuff, just Google either of the phrases in quotes and you won’t lack for material.
So, the obvious place to start is WordPress.org. Remember, that site won’t host your blog. There are many thousands of sites that will. Many of them have Fantastico scripts to install popular software, including WordPress.
There is a WordPress hosting page that recommends a select few of these hosts. The page explicitly identifies itself as a money-maker.
If you do decide to go with one of the hosts below and click through from this page, some will donate a portion of your fee back—so you can have a great host and support WordPress at the same time.
It’s not clear to me how much money this generates, or whether the money goes to Automattic or in some sense goes directly to the WordPress project. It could be argued that it doesn’t make a lot of difference: funds that WordPress “makes for itself” are funds that would probably otherwise be supplied by Automattic. I could make a similar point about Amazon affiliate revenues earned by links from the WordPress books page, but I doubt that there’s a lot of money involved there.
Now let’s look at Automattic’s site. We see there a Services page, which points to the Automattic Support Network, aimed at enterprises and other clients willing to pay thousands of dollars annually for support.
This is a classic open source business model: give away the software, charge for the services. It’s worth noting, though, that the Services page points not only to Automattic’s offering, but to a directory of WordPress Consultants, most offering design and development services. (Automattic does not currently list itself as offering such services.) This is an example of Automattic opting to help the WordPress ecosystem thrive.
A variation on give away the software, charge for the services has already been covered in this series of posts. WordPress.com offers WordPress as a service. It’s a freemium service: give away the software as a service, charge for the extras.
Automattic invests heavily in WordPress, the free/open source software project. Perhaps the most straightforward evidence for that statement is the About WordPress page, which lists the developers: several of them work at Automattic. Automattic profits from this investment, but it does not do so directly. The WordPress software powers WordPress.com, from which Automattic makes money. The more WordPress is used, the more opportunity there is for Automattic to make money from support services.
The next post in this series will cover Automattic’s other products. The next big news from WordPress will be the release of 2.5, expected any day now.
Business Ecosystem: A Way to Look at WordPress
March 25, 2008
The ecosystem metaphor for business may be too trendy, too tired, or both, but it can still be a useful one. I like the use of the metaphor by Marco Iansiti and Roy Levien, and have used it in writing about WordPress and Automattic.
I was looking back over that piece of writing, and found that Marco and Roy have a free 3-page paper at the Harvard Business School site: Creating Value in Your Business Ecosystem. It’s an excerpt from an article, which in turn is based on a book, but you can get the gist from the 3-pager, along with links to the longer version if you’re interested enough.
The thing I like about Marco and Roy’s use of the metaphor is their emphasis on what they call keystone organizations, which emphasize the overall health of their ecosystems. I consider Automattic to be such an organization. I seem to remember that CEO Toni Schneider is fond of the ecosystem metaphor, although I don’t know whether he’s read Marco and Roy’s stuff.
Making Money From Your WordPress.com Blog
March 17, 2008
There is a new record-holder for most popular post at this blog: Making Money From WordPress.com. It is part of a series on how Automattic, which runs WordPress.com, can make money as a firm based on free/open source software.
Seen out of the context of that series, the title can and has suggest that the earlier post is about how bloggers can make money from their WordPress.com blogs. It isn’t, but this post is. To be more specific, the current post is mostly about affiliate programmes, with a few words on each of a couple of other ideas.
I should start pointing out that this post reflects my opinions and my opinions only, but that I hope to see other opinions in the comments. One of my most fundamental opinions on this subject is: if you want to make serious money blogging, then WordPress.com is not currently the best place for you. There are exceptions, such as those already so well positioned to make money blogging that they are a natural fit for VIP hosting (e.g., Om, Schill). Most of the rest of us can’t afford VIP hosting, and if you have to ask how much it costs, you are among those of us who can’t afford it.
As I write this, I have in mind a reader who: wants to cover the costs of the WordPress.com extras they buy and use (e.g., CSS, domain); wouldn’t mind also covering the cost of the Flickr Pro account where they keep their photos; but doesn’t see making money as the purpose of their WordPress blog. If you’re still reading, then thank you, and it is just for you that I identify and explain three things you might do with you WordPress.com blog.
- Use affiliate programmes, such as Amazon Associates.
- Link to other sites from which you can make money: your Etsy store, your self-hosted WordPress blog which carries ads,…
- Promote your consulting or other services.
I’m not going to write a lot here about “problogging” itself. There’s a lot of good stuff about that on the web already. I’d start with Darren Rowse’s page for beginners: Make Money Blogging. Darren’s top income stream is Google AdSense.
But, as the WordPress.com FAQ tells us, Adsense, Yahoo, Chitika, TextLinkAds and other ads are not permitted to be added by users. Change to this policy has been under consideration for a long time, and I presume it’s still under consideration.
If you read on down the above-quoted FAQ page, you’ll find a link to another page: Types of Blogs. That page explicitly states that things like linking your book review post to Amazon are allowed. It implies, to me at least, that some affiliate links are allowed. I’d self-servingly classify my post on The World is Flat as a respectable example: here’s my take on the book, following this link will give you, not only a chance to buy this book, but also further information to help you make the decision.
That said, much of the code generated by affiliate programs such as Amazon Associates will not work at WordPress.com. That’s not so much because of the ads/affiliates policy as it is because of security issues. Javascript is not allowed at WordPress.com, and much affiliate code uses Javascript.
For this reason, one of my criteria for using an affiliate program on a WordPress.com blog is: will the program give me plain enough html code that WordPress.com won’t spit it back at me? But before it gets that far, affiliate links have to pass the following tests.
- Is it likely that some readers will find the link helpful? Amazon links do well on this test, because the provide user reviews, further recommendations, etc.
- Is it likely that other readers will find the link annoying?
- Do I use the stuff myself? For example, do I wear Threadless tshirts? Yes, and I feel a sense of affiliation with Threadless that goes beyond getting a free shirt every few times someone orders using m “street team” code. Do I stream music using Rhapsody? Yes, almost every day, and so I am confident that some of my dear readers will be interested to know that they can get a 14-Day free trial to Rhapsody Unlimited then pay only $12.99 per month.
I’ve set up a site to keep track of affiliate programs for bloggers. There are probably existing directories, but I don’t know of any that tag programs that generate plain enough html to be acceptable to WordPress.com. The first five programs I added do so, and so are tagged html.
If you’re wondering when we’re going to get on to the topic after affiliate programs, and link to an external site revenue-generating: we just did. BricaBox, the tool I used to set up the directory of affiliate programs mentioned in the last paragraph, allows ads. By the way, BricaBox is a “social content platform” about which I’ve previously posted.
Finally, there are lots of examples of WordPress.com bloggers who make their readers aware that they do more than blog. For example, Lorelle is a consultant, photographer, and teacher as well as a blogger and writer.
I hope that this has been helpful. Due to technical problems, I had to retype some the last few paragraphs, and re-edit the whole post. I hope that I caught everything.
If I’ve made errors with respect to WordPress.com policies, or to anything else, please let me know by email or commemt. Talking of comments, I see as I do the final edit (again) that we have a comment already.
