Automattic’s Aggressive Ambitions
Hot on the heels of snagging $29.5-million in venture capital, Automattic made another announcement - this time unveiling a Twitter-like service called Prologue in which Wordpress users can exchange short, Twitter-like messages.
Matt Mullenweg claims Automattic isn’t going after Twitter but that’s just his Texas charm at work because it’s increasingly difficult not to get the idea Automattic has big strategic plans that are just starting to emerge.
For one, Wordpress has much more potential than just being a blog publishing tool or even a content management platform. There’s been a lot of talk about it becoming a social networking platform with all kinds of applications bolted on to it. Now, that’s a lot more exciting than being confined to blogging.
With 2.2 million blogs hosted on Wordpress.com, 114 million global uniques and 482 million page views overall, Wordpress has tremendous reach and a great brand, which sets the stage for Automattic to start leveraging its market position.
In the scheme of things, Prologue is a relatively minor strategic foray - call it a trial balloon to see if Automattic can gain some traction with developers. My sense is there’s much more ambitious and interesting things around the corner - maybe some acquisitions, maybe the launch of an advertising network, maybe some social networking tools. All I know is Automattic isn’t using the entire $29.5-million to buy servers.
More: Like me, CenterNetworks wonders if Prologue “could be a game changer”, while Venture Beat suggests Wordpress could become an open platform.
Technorati Tags: Automattic, Matt Mullenweg, Prologue, Twitter
January 29th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
I’m not sure what “open platform” means in this context? WordPress is already as open of a platform you can be both being open source and highly pluggable.
I read the Venture Beat piece as asking specifically if it could be an open platform for a Twitter or Jaiku like application.
January 29th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Yes, you’re right. I guess my thinking is WP could become pro-actively open by seeding the market with new kinds of applications.
January 31st, 2008 at 6:22 pm
And as usual, you are oh so right. Matt and my team is almost too witty using a project name like prologue