Matt Mullenweg
Encyclopedia
Matthew Charles Mullenweg (born January 11, 1984 in Houston, Texas) is an online social media
entrepreneur
, web developer
and musician
living in San Francisco, California
. He is best known for his development of the free and open source
web software, WordPress
(which is now managed by The WordPress Foundation). He founded Automattic
, a company based in California
which provides free WordPress blog
s. He is also an open source
enthusiast, being the lead developer at WordPress Foundation
.
and writes a popular blog. ma.tt, a domain hack
. After quitting his job at CNET
, he has devoted the majority of his time to developing a number of open source projects and is a frequent speaker at conferences, such as Canada's Northern Voice
and the WordCamp events organized around WordPress software.
In late 2005, he founded Automattic
, the business behind WordPress.com
and Akismet
. Mullenweg attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts
where he studied jazz saxophone
. Mullenweg is also a Dvorak Keyboard
user.
competition. He contributed some minor code regarding typographic entities and cleaner permalinks.
Several months after development of b2 had stopped, in January 2003, he announced on his blog his plan of forking
the software to bring it up to date with web standards
and his needs. He was quickly contacted by Mike Little and together they started WordPress
from the b2 codebase. They were soon joined by original b2 developer Michel Valdrighi. Mullenweg was only nineteen years old, and a freshman (studying philosophy and political science) at the University of Houston
at the time.
He co-founded the Global Multimedia Protocols Group
in March 2004 with Eric Meyer
and Tantek Çelik
. GMPG wrote the first of the Microformats
.
In April 2004 with fellow WordPress developer Dougal Campbell, they launched Ping-O-Matic which is a hub for notifying blog search engine
s such as Technorati
of blog updates. Ping-O-Matic currently handles over 1 million pings a day.
In May 2004 chief WordPress competitor Movable Type
announced a radical price change which drove thousands of users to seek alternate solutions. This is widely regarded as the tipping point for WordPress.
In October 2004, he was recruited by CNET to work on WordPress for them and help them with blogs and new media offerings. He dropped out of college and moved to San Francisco from Houston, TX the following month.
In December 2004, Mullenweg announced bbPress which he wrote from scratch in a few days over the holidays.
Mullenweg and the WordPress
team released WordPress 1.5 "Strayhorn" in February 2005, which had over 900,000 downloads. The release introduced their theme system, moderation features, and a new front end and back end redesign.
During late March and early April 2005, Andrew Baio found at least 168,000 hidden articles on the WordPress.org website that were using a technique known as cloaking
. Mullenweg admitted accepting the questionable advertisement and removed all articles from the domain.
After a somewhat quiet year, in October 2005 he announced he was leaving CNET to focus on WordPress and related activities full time.
Several days later, on October 25, Akismet
was made public to the world. Akismet is a distributed effort to stop comment and trackback spam by using the collective input of everyone using the service.
WordPress.com
stopped being invite-only and opened up to the world in November 2005.
In December 2005 he announced Automattic
, the company behind WordPress.com and Akismet. Automattic employed people who had contributed to the WordPress project, including lead developer Ryan Boren and WordPress MU creator Donncha O Caoimh. An Akismet licensing deal and WordPress bundling was announced with Yahoo!
Small Business web hosting about the same time.
In January 2006 Mullenweg recruited former Oddpost
CEO and Yahoo!
executive Toni Schneider to join Automattic as CEO, bringing the size of the company to 5.
It was discovered in April 2006 through a Regulation D filing that Automattic raised approximately 1.1 million dollars in funding, which Mullenweg addressed in his blog. Investors were Polaris Ventures, True Ventures, Radar Partners, and CNET.
The first WordCamp conference in July 2006 was pulled together in 3 weeks, in the style of BarCamp
, attracting over 300 people to the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco. The first WordCamp Argentina event was held on October 31, 2007 in Buenos Aires.
In March 2007 he was named #16 of the 50 most important people on the web by PC World, reportedly the youngest on the list.
In October 2007 Mullenweg acquired the Gravatar
service and was rumored to have turned down a US$200 million offer to buy his company Automattic
.
In January 2008 Automattic raised an additional US$29.5 million for the company from Polaris Venture Partners
, True Ventures, Radar Partners, and the New York Times Company. According to Mullenweg's blog the funding was a result of spurned acquisition offers months before and the decision to keep the company independent. At the time the company had 18 employees. One of the reported plans for the funding was in a forum service called TalkPress.
In July 2008 Mullenweg was featured on the cover of Linux Journal
wearing a Fight Club t-shirt. Later that month a San Francisco Chronicle story put him on the cover of the business section and noted he still drove a Chevrolet Lumina
and WordPress.com was ranked #31 on Alexa with 90 million monthly page views.
September 2008 brought more press coverage with Mullenweg being named to the Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30 by Inc. Magazine and one of the 25 Most Influential People on the Web by BusinessWeek, again the youngest on BusinessWeek's list.
In 2009 Mullenweg was named an honorary patron of the University Philosophical Society for his contributions to information technology and culture.
In January 2009 Mullenweg told USA Today that Automattic was profitable, had 35 employees, had gotten an office on Pier 38 in San Francisco, and had landed CNN as a client for WordPress.com.
It was reported in May 2009 that due to Mullenweg's unwillingness to comply with Chinese censorship WordPress.com was effectively blocked by China's Golden Shield Project
.
Social media
The term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...
entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
, web developer
Web developer
A web developer is a software developer or software engineer who specializes in, or is specifically engaged in, the development of World Wide Web applications, or distributed network applications that are run over HTTP from a web server to a web browser....
and musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
living in San Francisco, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. He is best known for his development of the free and open source
Free and open source software
Free and open-source software or free/libre/open-source software is software that is liberally licensed to grant users the right to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...
web software, WordPress
WordPress
WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and publishing platform powered by PHP and MySQL. It is often customized into a content management system . It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet's "top 1...
(which is now managed by The WordPress Foundation). He founded Automattic
Automattic
Automattic, Inc. is a web development corporation founded in August 2005.It is most notable for WordPress.com , as well as its contributions to WordPress .-Projects:Other projects include:...
, a company based in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
which provides free WordPress blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
s. He is also an open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
enthusiast, being the lead developer at WordPress Foundation
WordPress
WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and publishing platform powered by PHP and MySQL. It is often customized into a content management system . It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet's "top 1...
.
More
He is the founding developer of the popular open-source blogging software WordPressWordPress
WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and publishing platform powered by PHP and MySQL. It is often customized into a content management system . It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet's "top 1...
and writes a popular blog. ma.tt, a domain hack
Domain hack
A domain hack is an unconventional domain name that combines domain levels, especially the top-level domain , to spell out the full "name" or title of the domain. Examples include del.icio.us , goo.gl and fold.it...
. After quitting his job at CNET
CNET
CNET is a tech media website that publishes news articles, blogs, and podcasts on technology and consumer electronics. Originally founded in 1994 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, it was the flagship brand of CNET Networks and became a brand of CBS Interactive through CNET Networks' acquisition...
, he has devoted the majority of his time to developing a number of open source projects and is a frequent speaker at conferences, such as Canada's Northern Voice
Northern Voice
Northern Voice is an annual blogging, social software and online communities conference held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The conference is organized by members of the Vancouver blogging community, and efforts are made to keep the event accessible to as many people as possible...
and the WordCamp events organized around WordPress software.
In late 2005, he founded Automattic
Automattic
Automattic, Inc. is a web development corporation founded in August 2005.It is most notable for WordPress.com , as well as its contributions to WordPress .-Projects:Other projects include:...
, the business behind WordPress.com
WordPress.com
WordPress.com is a weblog hosting provider owned by Automattic which opened to beta testers on August 8, 2005 and opened to the public on November 21, 2005. It is powered by the open source WordPress software...
and Akismet
Akismet
Akismet or Automattic Kismet is a spam filtering service. It attempts to filter link spam from blog comments and spam TrackBack pings. The filter works by combining information about spam captured on all participating blogs, and then using those spam rules to block future spam...
. Mullenweg attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts
High School for the Performing and Visual Arts
The High School for the Performing and Visual Arts is a secondary school located at 4001 Stanford Street in the Montrose district of Houston, Texas. The school is a part of the Houston Independent School District....
where he studied jazz saxophone
Saxophone
The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...
. Mullenweg is also a Dvorak Keyboard
Dvorak Simplified Keyboard
The Dvorak Simplified Keyboard is a keyboard layout patented in 1936 by Dr. August Dvorak and his brother-in-law, Dr. William Dealey. Over the years several slight variations were designed by the team led by Dvorak or by ANSI...
user.
WordPress history
In June 2002 Mullenweg started using the b2/cafelog blogging software to complement the photos he was taking on a trip to Washington D.C. after participating in the National Fed ChallengeNational Fed Challenge
The National Fed Challenge is an academic competition that provides high school students with an insider's view of how the United States central bank, the Federal Reserve, makes monetary policy....
competition. He contributed some minor code regarding typographic entities and cleaner permalinks.
Several months after development of b2 had stopped, in January 2003, he announced on his blog his plan of forking
Fork (software development)
In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a legal copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software...
the software to bring it up to date with web standards
Web standards
Web standards is a general term for the formal standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web. In recent years, the term has been more frequently associated with the trend of endorsing a set of standardized best practices for building web sites,...
and his needs. He was quickly contacted by Mike Little and together they started WordPress
WordPress
WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and publishing platform powered by PHP and MySQL. It is often customized into a content management system . It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet's "top 1...
from the b2 codebase. They were soon joined by original b2 developer Michel Valdrighi. Mullenweg was only nineteen years old, and a freshman (studying philosophy and political science) at the University of Houston
University of Houston
The University of Houston is a state research university, and is the flagship institution of the University of Houston System. Founded in 1927, it is Texas's third-largest university with nearly 40,000 students. Its campus spans 667 acres in southeast Houston, and was known as University of...
at the time.
He co-founded the Global Multimedia Protocols Group
Global Multimedia Protocols Group
The Global Multimedia Protocols Group was founded in March 2003 by Tantek Çelik, Eric Meyer, and Matt Mullenweg. The group has developed methods to represent human relationships using XHTML called XHTML Friends Network and XHTML Meta Data Profiles , for use in weblogs....
in March 2004 with Eric Meyer
Eric Meyer
Eric A. Meyer is an American web design consultant and author. He is best known for his advocacy work on behalf of web standards, most notably Cascading Style Sheets , a technique for managing how HTML is displayed...
and Tantek Çelik
Tantek Çelik
Tantek Çelik is a computer scientist of Turkish-American descent and was the Chief Technologist at Technorati. He is one of the principal editors of several CSS Specifications....
. GMPG wrote the first of the Microformats
Microformats
A microformat is a web-based approach to semantic markup which seeks to re-use existing HTML/XHTML tags to convey metadata and other attributes in web pages and other contexts that support HTML, such as RSS...
.
In April 2004 with fellow WordPress developer Dougal Campbell, they launched Ping-O-Matic which is a hub for notifying blog search engine
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...
s such as Technorati
Technorati
Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs. By June 2008, Technorati was indexing 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media...
of blog updates. Ping-O-Matic currently handles over 1 million pings a day.
In May 2004 chief WordPress competitor Movable Type
Movable Type
Movable Type is a weblog publishing system developed by the company Six Apart. It was publicly announced on September 3, 2001; version 1.0 was publicly released on October 8, 2001. On 12 December 2007, Movable Type was relicensed as free software under the GNU General Public License...
announced a radical price change which drove thousands of users to seek alternate solutions. This is widely regarded as the tipping point for WordPress.
In October 2004, he was recruited by CNET to work on WordPress for them and help them with blogs and new media offerings. He dropped out of college and moved to San Francisco from Houston, TX the following month.
In December 2004, Mullenweg announced bbPress which he wrote from scratch in a few days over the holidays.
Mullenweg and the WordPress
WordPress
WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and publishing platform powered by PHP and MySQL. It is often customized into a content management system . It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet's "top 1...
team released WordPress 1.5 "Strayhorn" in February 2005, which had over 900,000 downloads. The release introduced their theme system, moderation features, and a new front end and back end redesign.
During late March and early April 2005, Andrew Baio found at least 168,000 hidden articles on the WordPress.org website that were using a technique known as cloaking
Cloaking
Cloaking is a search engine optimization technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the user's browser. This is done by delivering content based on the IP addresses or the User-Agent HTTP header of the user requesting the page...
. Mullenweg admitted accepting the questionable advertisement and removed all articles from the domain.
After a somewhat quiet year, in October 2005 he announced he was leaving CNET to focus on WordPress and related activities full time.
Several days later, on October 25, Akismet
Akismet
Akismet or Automattic Kismet is a spam filtering service. It attempts to filter link spam from blog comments and spam TrackBack pings. The filter works by combining information about spam captured on all participating blogs, and then using those spam rules to block future spam...
was made public to the world. Akismet is a distributed effort to stop comment and trackback spam by using the collective input of everyone using the service.
WordPress.com
WordPress.com
WordPress.com is a weblog hosting provider owned by Automattic which opened to beta testers on August 8, 2005 and opened to the public on November 21, 2005. It is powered by the open source WordPress software...
stopped being invite-only and opened up to the world in November 2005.
In December 2005 he announced Automattic
Automattic
Automattic, Inc. is a web development corporation founded in August 2005.It is most notable for WordPress.com , as well as its contributions to WordPress .-Projects:Other projects include:...
, the company behind WordPress.com and Akismet. Automattic employed people who had contributed to the WordPress project, including lead developer Ryan Boren and WordPress MU creator Donncha O Caoimh. An Akismet licensing deal and WordPress bundling was announced with Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
Small Business web hosting about the same time.
In January 2006 Mullenweg recruited former Oddpost
Oddpost
Oddpost was a pay-for webmail service, in 2002, that pioneered the use of JavaScript to mimic a desktop mail application, the first notable foray into using Ajax methodologies for webmail...
CEO and Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
executive Toni Schneider to join Automattic as CEO, bringing the size of the company to 5.
It was discovered in April 2006 through a Regulation D filing that Automattic raised approximately 1.1 million dollars in funding, which Mullenweg addressed in his blog. Investors were Polaris Ventures, True Ventures, Radar Partners, and CNET.
The first WordCamp conference in July 2006 was pulled together in 3 weeks, in the style of BarCamp
BarCamp
BarCamp is an international network of user-generated conferences . They are open, participatory workshop-events, the content of which is provided by participants. The first BarCamps focused on early-stage web applications, and were related to open source technologies, social protocols, and open...
, attracting over 300 people to the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco. The first WordCamp Argentina event was held on October 31, 2007 in Buenos Aires.
In March 2007 he was named #16 of the 50 most important people on the web by PC World, reportedly the youngest on the list.
In October 2007 Mullenweg acquired the Gravatar
Gravatar
Gravatar is a service for providing globally unique avatars which was created by Tom Preston-Werner.- Designs :...
service and was rumored to have turned down a US$200 million offer to buy his company Automattic
Automattic
Automattic, Inc. is a web development corporation founded in August 2005.It is most notable for WordPress.com , as well as its contributions to WordPress .-Projects:Other projects include:...
.
In January 2008 Automattic raised an additional US$29.5 million for the company from Polaris Venture Partners
Polaris Venture Partners
Polaris Venture Partners is a venture capital firm specializing in seed and early stage investments particularly in companies engaged in the information technology and life sciences sectors....
, True Ventures, Radar Partners, and the New York Times Company. According to Mullenweg's blog the funding was a result of spurned acquisition offers months before and the decision to keep the company independent. At the time the company had 18 employees. One of the reported plans for the funding was in a forum service called TalkPress.
In July 2008 Mullenweg was featured on the cover of Linux Journal
Linux Journal
Linux Journal is a monthly technology magazine published by Belltown Media, Inc. of Houston, Texas. The magazine focuses specifically on Linux, allowing the content to be a highly specialized source of information for open source enthusiasts.-History:...
wearing a Fight Club t-shirt. Later that month a San Francisco Chronicle story put him on the cover of the business section and noted he still drove a Chevrolet Lumina
Chevrolet Lumina
The North American Chevrolet Lumina sedan , coupe and minivan were first introduced in 1989 for the 1990 model year as a new range of vehicles from the Chevrolet brand of General Motors to replace the Chevrolet Camaro, Chevrolet Celebrity sedan, and the Monte Carlo coupe. The Lumina was an answer...
and WordPress.com was ranked #31 on Alexa with 90 million monthly page views.
September 2008 brought more press coverage with Mullenweg being named to the Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30 by Inc. Magazine and one of the 25 Most Influential People on the Web by BusinessWeek, again the youngest on BusinessWeek's list.
In 2009 Mullenweg was named an honorary patron of the University Philosophical Society for his contributions to information technology and culture.
In January 2009 Mullenweg told USA Today that Automattic was profitable, had 35 employees, had gotten an office on Pier 38 in San Francisco, and had landed CNN as a client for WordPress.com.
It was reported in May 2009 that due to Mullenweg's unwillingness to comply with Chinese censorship WordPress.com was effectively blocked by China's Golden Shield Project
Golden Shield Project
The Golden Shield Project , colloquially referred to as the Great Firewall of China is a censorship and surveillance project operated by the Ministry of Public Security division of the government of the People's Republic of China...
.
External links
- Matt's interview with CMS Critic
- Article in the Houston Press
- Matt at a Web 2.0 panel in the University of San Francisco - Apr 2008
- Interview with Matt Mullenweg
- BlogInterviewer.com Interview with Matt Mullenweg about WordPress
- Interview on Digital Web
- Linux Link Tech Show interview (audio), 2006
- Guardian Unlimited profile, November 4, 2006
- Wizard of WordPress video Part 1 and Part 2 on CNET, May 16, 2007
- Interview with Matt Mullenweg on WPCandy
- Conversation with Matt Mullenweg - Intruders tv video
- Matt Mullenweg on Facebook
- Biography of WordPress With Matt Mullenweg