The world of web publishing continues to thrive, perfectly demonstrated earlier this month when Automattic sought funding of roughly $100-150 million. If successful, this would bring the company’s value to more than a whopping $1 billion.
The last fortnight has been a busy one for the company, who acquired Longreads just a week before announcing their bid for further funding. Longreads, a relative newcomer, describes itself as ‘decided to helping people find and share the best storytelling in the world’; it’s an interesting move for Automattic and it will certainly be exciting to see what this new acquisition means.
A giant in the world of WordPress, Automattic’s CEO is Matt Mullenweg, the primary developer and founder WordPress itself. Mullenweg’s transition into the role of CEO is a recent one; he made the change in January of this year, after previously focusing more on product-related work. Having moved from strength to strength since it was founded in 2005, Automattic has grown alongside WordPress and continued to innovate to stay at the top of the web development field.
It’s impossible to deny that WordPress is the future and Automattic is inexplicable proof of this. More than 44 million posts are uploaded to WordPress blogs every single month and they enjoy views each month from more than 400 million users worldwide.
When you look at the statistics surrounding WordPress’ usage it’s abundantly clear that web publishing is growing at a scale print publishing just cannot compete with. Which I’d bet is exactly what companies like Automattic are banking on.
