WordPress’ new version 3.3 gives multimedia and mobile some love

WordPress released version 3.3 today, which is meant to both streamline the editing process for seasoned WordPress users, as well as help introduce new bloggers to the product.

WordPress software provides bloggers with a suite of editing capabilities that can be used by novices all the way to professional news organizations. The company allows bloggers to host their blogs on WordPress’ servers or download WordPress’ backend editor while working off of a different server. Multiples … Continue Reading

WordPress takes on Google’s AdSense with new WordAds service (update)

Popular content management system (CMS) company WordPress is launching a new word-based advertising service that will compete directly with Google’s AdSense, the company announced today.

WordPress, which is owned by Automattic, powers over 24 million blogs and runs on 15 percent of the world’s most trafficked sites. The company previously entered into an advertising partnership with Federated Media in October, but didn’t release many details. Now it seems that this new partnership has birthed a … Continue Reading

Monster blogger turns monster product guy: Marshall Kirkpatrick stepping back from ReadWriteWeb

Marshall Kirkpatrick, a formidable voice and fascinating mind in the tech blogosphere, is turning his attention from writing about startups to running his own.

Kirkpatrick has been at ReadWriteWeb, a publication covering all things Internet-related, for the past four years, most recently as co-editor and VP of content development.

He will be stepping back from this full-time role to work on Plexus Engine, a tool that will help poor saps like you and me be … Continue Reading

Tumblr grabs another $85M in fresh funding

Popular blogging service Tumblr has raised a fresh $85 million round of funding. Hopefully, the company will use this infusion to find more ways to make money.

Tumblr has seen some impressive page view growth. But even with the growth, the company has struggled to generate revenues.

Traffic for Tumblr’s blogs now attract more than 13 billion views per month compared to 2 million views at the beginning of the year. comScore stats indicate the … Continue Reading

Tumblr on verge of raising up to $100M with massive $800M valuation

Popular blogging startup Tumblr is close to raising between $75 and $100 million, with an incredible $800 million valuation, says the Wall Street Journal.

Tumblr’s blogging platform emphasizes its ease of use and now hosts more than 27 million blogs. Fashion and photography blogs are especially popular on the site because it pushes strong visuals. A reported 20 percent of Tumblr blogs are related to fashion.

Silicon Valley venture firm Greylock Partners, which has also … Continue Reading

WordPress runs 15 percent of the web’s highest trafficked sites

Online publishing software company WordPress released some incredible growth statistics Friday, including that WordPress is running on top of 14.7 percent of the world’s top one million websites. Almost equally astounding is that 22 of 100 new active domains are running on WordPress.

One year ago, WordPress was used by 8.5 percent of the world’s top million sites, so it’s astounding how many domains are using it now. In July, WordPress-based sites passed the 50 … Continue Reading

Twitter confirms investment from Facebook, Zynga investor DST

Twitter today confirmed that it is raising a large funding round from Russia’s DST, the investment company that has backed Facebook, Groupon and Zynga.

“Now we have an opportunity to expand Twitter’s reach with a significant round of funding led by the venture firm DST Global, with the participation of several of our existing investors,” the company said in a blog post.

There were reports earlier this month that the company was raising a $400 … Continue Reading

Regulatory filing indicates Twitter raising $400M round

Twitter is raising $400 million in its seventh round of funding, according to documents uncovered by venture capital information service VCExperts.

The company is issuing around 10.1 million shares of Series G-1 preferred stock and 14.8 million shares of Series G-2 preferred stock. Both sets of shares are priced at $16.09 in the Series G preferred round. The filing was submitted to the Delaware Secretary of State’s Division of Corporations on Tuesday.

There were reports … Continue Reading

Twitter raising $400M round, valued at $8B

Micro-blogging service Twitter is in the process of raising $400 million in funding that would value the company at $8 billion, according to a report by the New York Times.

The site has more than 300 million registered users who fire off quick messages, called Tweets, that are less than 140 characters long. The company was valued at $3.7 billion after its most recent round of funding in December. Twitter makes $200 million each year, … Continue Reading

Tumblr brings in $30M despite stability woes

It looks like it’s easy enough to forget about 24 hours of downtime.

Lite blogging service Tumblr has raised $30 million in a recent round of funding that includes the likes of Sequoia Capital, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing confirms some earlier rumors buzzing around that Sequoia was dropping some serious cash into the casual blogging service.

Tumblr, despite having some growing pains and seeing frequent outages, … Continue Reading

Blog company Automattic has a massive audience, less-massive revenue

Executives from Automattic, the company behind blogging service WordPress, recently took the stage at the Le Web conference in Paris, where they shared some details about how the company is doing, as recounted in TechCrunch. The big takeaway: Automattic has signed up a long list of publishers who reach a huge audience, but it hasn’t succeeded in turning that into equally an impressive source of revenue.

Specifically, Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg and chief executive Toni … Continue Reading

Blogging startup Tumblr apologizes for growing pains

Tumblr, the fast-growing, well-funded startup which offers a simple blogging service, stumbled rather badly this weekend. Its site went down for what appears to be almost 24 hours and took its users’ blogs down with it.

The good thing is that Tumblr is back, and apparently without any loss of data — now I can go back to reading about hipster puppies! But in an atmosphere where you see a flood of complaints whenever there’s … Continue Reading

Gawker's Nick Denton writes an obituary for old-school blogging

Founder Nick Denton has been talking about Gawker Media’s move away from the standard blog format for a while now. Today he published a long post explaining the thinking behind the changes. You might even call the post a manifesto, if it wasn’t so clinical.

The basic idea behind the redesign — a layout with big images highlighting the day’s most important stories, while the old-fashioned, reverse-chronological news stream runs along the side — is … Continue Reading

Blogger survey shows Facebook and Twitter are key tools for building traffic

A deeper dive into Technorati‘s annual State of the Blogosphere 2010 report shows that social media such as Facebook and Twitter have become indispensable to bloggers.

About 87 percent of bloggers use Facebook, while 78 percent use Twitter. They they do so to promote their blogs, bring interesting links to light, keep up with news and events, and understand what people are buzzing about.

Technorati released part one of the report yesterday. Here are some … Continue Reading

State of the Blogosphere: More bloggers are doing it with their phones

Technorati‘s annual State of the Blogosphere report captures the shifting demographics of blogging. This year’s report shows that bloggers are becoming more mainstream, are using more tools for social media and closer engagement with their readers, and are expanding to new platforms such as mobile phones.

Technorati hosts lots of blogs and provides a search engine for them as well as a portal for all things about blogs. About 25 percent of all bloggers are … Continue Reading

WordPress.com is now default blogging platform for Windows Live users

Automattic, the creator of WordPress.com, and Windows Live are partnering to make WordPress the default blogging platform for Windows Live users after an announcement by Windows Live’s Dharmesh Mehta (pictured right) at TechCrunch Disrupt today.

The new partnership effectively kills Windows Live’s native blogging platform, Windows Live Spaces, and adds about 7 million blogs to the WordPress platform. Users will have about six months to migrate their blog over to the WordPress platform, Mehta said.… Continue Reading

Tumblr lead developer leaves to work on his own company

Tumblr chief technology officer Marco Arment said he has left the company to work on his own startup, Instapaper. His comments came in an e-mail to VentureBeat today.

While he has left Tumblr as an official executive, Arment (pictured left) said on his blog that he will still be involved with the company as a consultant. Arment served as Tumblr’s lead developer for four years.

“Tumblr’s technical management needs have evolved to require types of … Continue Reading

Tumblr flies past Posterous in lite-blogging race

Tumblr and Posterous both provide users with the ability to blog without all that much effort. But as similar as the two “light blogging” platforms are, Tumblr is the favorite among casual members of the blogosphere, according to traffic data from Quantcast.

Tumblr attracted around 42 million monthly visits to its hosted blog network globally (17 million of which come from the U.S.), while Posterous averages only around 7 million monthly visits on its hosted … Continue Reading

Blog platform Tumblr’s soaring traffic brings growing pains

Tumblr, a social media network made up of millions of personal and business blogs, is seeing massive traffic growth, but is undergoing equally big growing pains.

Activity on the network of Tumblr blogs skyrocketed over the first half of the year and reached about 1.7 billion page views in the month of August. (Automattic’s WordPress.com, an older, more established blog platform, recently reported 2.1 billion monthly pageviews.) But Tumblr, which employs about 10 people, has … Continue Reading

Six Apart, social media's neglected star, gets deal buzz

For once, people are talking about Six Apart, a blogging pioneer that hasn’t otherwise generated much chatter recently. Rumors are flying that the company’s in the midst of some kind of a deal — though we hear executives at Six Apart are denying anything’s afoot.

The most specific rumor we’ve heard is that Six Apart is looking at deals in Japan, a market it entered in 2003 and where it remains the dominant blogging platform. … Continue Reading