Interviews with Digital Media Thought Leaders

WordPress Pioneer & Automattic Founder - Matt Mullenweg

Podcast Audio | Posted by Phil Leigh on May 14, 2008

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Matt Mullenweg If you would like to hear what the founder of WordPress.com has to say about the future of blogging, this interview is for you.

Subject: Our guest today is Matt Mullenweg who is the Founder of Automattic, Inc. which is the owner of WordPress.com and the Akismet anti-spam software for blogs. Invested capital in Automattic is now $30 million from such sources as The New York Times, Polaris Ventures, True Ventures, and Radar Ventures.

Matt got started as a developer for the predecessor of WordPress.org which is an open source platform for blogging. Since nearly all of the WordPress.org developers are serious bloggers themselves, the platform has become the MP3 of blogging standards. It is easily optimized for search engine results, friendly to widgets, and capable of multimedia blogging including, video, audio, text, and animation. It is used by sites ranging from Inside Digital Media to The New York Times.

Matt emphasizes two points for the future.

First, he believes that corporations will find that establishing a blog will become nearly as important as having a Website. He feels that we are near a threshold in corporate blogging much like the one ten, or so, years ago when nearly all companies first concluded the competitive necessity of Websites.

Second, he believes that future blogging will increasingly become multimedia. While text will remain popular, video and audio blogging will gain significance along with podcasting.

Phil’s Take. I agree with Matt. Companies will need blogs to establish stronger connections to their customers and prospects. It also seems certain that Websites will increasingly make use of mixed media including video, audio, text, and animation. As Marshall McLuhan put it “Content follows form” and the form of the Internet is multimedia.

Tip of the Day: Google Likes Older Websites

Google likes older websites because most of the new content entering the Web today is spam, generated by bots that are trying to raise the search profile of latecomers. If you have an established Website you have to compete for attention against the newcomers who know that Google also likes fresh content.

One of the best ways to amplify the advantage of your established Website is to regularly provide fresh material via a multimedia blog integrated into your website.

Contact me to learn how Inside Digital Media help you incorporate a multimedia blog into your website, because if you clicked on the links above you just witnessed the value of video.