Automattic, the software company best known for running the for-profit fork of the WordPress blog publishing system, is perhaps the best proof out there that blogging can be a real business.
The company, which was founded in 2005 by 28-year-old WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg, disclosed some big numbers in an interview published today by AllThingsD’s Liz Gannes. Automattic is profitable and on track to make $45 million in revenue this year. WordPress — both through its open source software and the WordPress.com platform — now powers 70 million sites (Disclosure: TechCrunch is one of them, by the way.)
That represents serious growth, even from a near-term perspective. Some 16 months ago in December 2010, Mullenweg told our own Alexia Tsotsis that Automattic’s revenue was around $10 million. At that time, WordPress was powering 30 million publishers.
It makes sense then that Automattic has hired its first full-time finance executive to concentrate on those numbers. Stuart West, who was previously chief financial officer at educational software company Kno, has joined Automattic as CFO. The company has also brought on Paul Sieminski to serve as its first general legal counsel (or, as Mullenweg has characterized the role in his own blog post announcing the executive appointments, “Consigliere/Automattlock.”) Meanwhile, Mullenweg still serves as the company’s president, and the CEO role has been occupied by Toni Schneider since 2006.
Automattic is the company behind WordPress.com, the simplest, most secure way to start web-publishing immediately on the open source WordPress platform. They also make Jetpack for WordPress, which bundles a number of social improvements to the WordPress core software as a single plugin. Automattic offers a number of products, like VaultPress and Akismet, on a freemium model so anyone can use them for free, and later have the choice to pay extra for premium features. Automattic has over 150 employees, including...
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