Aside from the sizzle within the next WordPress upgrade (aka 2.7), one of the most interesting parts of WordCamp Toronto was experienced the community’s adulation for Matt Mullenweg.
It’s pretty amazing to see how Mullenweg, who still all of 24-years-old, handles himself as WordPress’ chief evangelist with such ease and charm. Despite WordPress’ rise as the blogging platform and Automattic’s emergence as a venture-back entity ($29.5-million in the last round from investors such as the New York Times), Mullenweg still seems the same guy who founded WordPress.
As Automattic (the parent company behind WordPress.com) grows, Mullenweg is spending a lot of his time within the community, traveling to more than a dozen WordCamp around the world this year. Clearly, it’s a role he enjoys; highlighted by the fact he stayed the entire day at WordCamp Toronto after talking in the morning.
While Mullenweg is happy to talk about WordPress and how well it’s doing, he doesn’t talk much about Automattic. As a former business reporter, Automattic interests me as much as WordPress because it’s the corporate that – along with the community – is driving WordPress forward.
When I asked Mullenweg, for example, how life had changed since Automattic raised its venture capital round, he said “not much at all”. In a sense, that’s a good thing because you would hate to see money change Mullenweg or WordPress.
That said, Automattic is a business with high-profile investors so growth – be it revenue, pageviews on WordPress.com or the number of products/services being offered – is important. Mullenweg isn’t spending his days on airplanes simply because he loves WordPress.
When you hear the growth of WordPress, it’s difficult not to do some mental number-crunching to get a sense of Automattic’s potential. WordPress.com (the free hosted version of WordPress) is attracting 6.5 billion pageviews/month. To put that in perspective, if Automattic put a single ad on every WordPress.com blog, it would make $6.5-million/month in revenue based on a $1/CPM rate. This would make Automattic a $75-million company.
Mullenweg said 2.38-million new blogs have been created on WordPress.com so far this year, compared with 1.04-million in 2007. Meanwhile, there have been 11.1 million downloads of WordPress in 2008, compared with 2.8-million in 2007.
On a variety of fronts, WordPress is truly impressive – whether you’re talking about the service, the community, Mullenweg or Automattic. It is amazing to see how it has emerged within the last couple of years as the platform amid competition from players such as Blogger.com and TypePad.
One of the questions Mullenweg was asked at WordCamp Toronto was when WordPress would stop pushing out so many updates (currently slated for every three months). The answer was intriguing:
“It takes 10 years to create great softeware so we’re five years in. We’re halfway there.”
Technorati Tags: blogs, matt mullenweg, WordPress
I was a little sore that I would be out of town for the big Toronto show but thanks for posting your comments on it. I have a theory that in 20 years Matt Mullenweg will be the new Steve Jobs.
I can’t remember who it was that asked the question, which current free software would you pay for and if so how much? For me, the core piece of software I would pay for is WordPress. I would pay a monthly fee so that my updates would come automatically and be seamlessly and painlessly installed. I’d be willing to pay $10 a month for this, and I’m sure there are many others who would also. Based on the current numbers that would make WordPress a BILLION dollar a year entity.
I was also at WordCamp Mark, and very impressed by Matt and his humility as well.
Mike,
I’d also pay for WordPress Plus if it was offered. Sorry we didn’t a chance to meet.
Mark
That 2.7 “sizzle” may be primarily skin deep. What the platform needs is some functional improvements and performance enhancements. Hopefully some of these Automattic acquisitions (Intense Debate) end up in WordPress.
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Actually, my question was “when would they stop adding new things to WordPress?”
I agree though, it is interesting that Matt is traveling around promoting WordPress around the world. That, no doubt, takes a fair bit of money, but is probably worth it in the end, as more people are using the software than ever before.
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