Matt Mullenweg posted yesterday on the Gravatar blog about the acquisition of Gravatar by Automattic. The post isn’t there now. It wasn’t just my imagination: Om Malik linked to the post. Update: Matt’s post is back.
Here’s what I remember Matt saying: Gravatar is great; it is, or might be, having trouble scaling; Automattic is really good at scaling; so Automattic acquired Gravatar; the Gravatar code has been moved to Automattic’s servers.
There are posts on the acquisition at: Matt’s blog; the WordPress.com blog; Read/Write Web; Mashable.
The last of these is less about the acquisition, and more about the rumor that Automattic is valued in the $150 million to $300 million range. The same rumor/post has it that Automattic has suitors, and that its investors would like to see it say yes to one of them.
I’ve actually created a Gravatar class if you click the link in my name. Loosely coupled and works like a dream – it also has a cache with an expiration date for the avatar – to save on loading times. It can merely load the avatar in locally.
Adam @ TalkPHP.com