Who says bloggers don’t make any money?
Automattic, which runs the popular blogging service WordPress.com, is in the market for a new round of funding that would value the company at more than $1 billion, according to Fortune.
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Automattic is reportedly seeking $100 to $150 million in funding, roughly six months after Tiger Global Management and Iconiq Capital bought out existing Automattic investor Polaris Capital for $75 million in September. The report from Fortune does not specify who Automattic would be raising from. A company spokesperson declined Mashable‘s request for comment.
Automattic is a major force in the world of online publishing, thanks to its role in the development of the open-source project, WordPress. WordPress blogs are viewed by more than 400 million people monthly, and users create more than 44 million posts each month. At the service’s peak, roughly one year ago in March, that number was more than 49 million monthly posts.
Established news publications such as CNN and GigaOm use WordPress to support their websites.
The new funding is yet another sign that Automattic has no plans to slow down. The company also acquired Longreads, an aggregator of long-form web content, for an undisclosed sum last week.
It’s also a sign that while the print-publishing industry seems to be struggling, web publishing is picking up the slack. Medium, the blogging platform started by Twitter cofounder Ev Williams, also raised $25 million in funding earlier this year.
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Article source: http://mashable.com/2014/04/15/wordpress-automattic/