Matthew Mullenweg

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Matthew Mullenweg 2014

Matthew Charles Mullenweg (born January 11, 1984 in Houston , Texas ) is an American web developer living in San Francisco , California . He is the initiator and lead developer of the widely used web publishing system WordPress and works on other open source projects. At the end of 2005, Mullenweg founded the company Automattic, which among other things operates the blog portal WordPress.com, develops the WordPress plug-in Akismet and provides the Gravatar service, which was purchased in August 2007 .

WordPress developer

In June 2002, Mullenweg began using b2 / cafelog blog software to post information about the photos he took on a trip to Washington DC after participating in the National Fed Challenge . He contributed some code for typographic entities and cleaner permalinks.

In January 2003, several months after development of b2 had ceased, Mullenweg announced on his blog his plan to fork the software to bring it in line with current Internet standards and his needs. Quickly, Mike Little reported to him and together they started WordPress with b2 - code base . Shortly thereafter, the original b2 developer Michel Valdrighi joined them. Mullenweg was only 19 years old at the time and a freshman at the University of Houston . In March 2003 he founded the Global Multimedia Protocols Group (GMPG) with Eric Meyer and Tantek Çelik . The GMPG wrote the first microformat . With Dougal Campbell, the co-developer of WordPress, he started Ping-O-Matic in April 2004 , a central service to inform blog search engines such as Technorati about blog updates. Ping-O-Matic delivered 1 million pings per day in February 2007.

In May 2004, WordPress’s main competitor , Movable Type , announced a radical change in pricing structure that drove thousands of users to look for new solutions. This is widely seen as the breakthrough for WordPress. In October 2004, Mullenweg was hired by CNET to work for them on WordPress and to help them with their blogs and new media opportunities. He dropped out of college and moved from Houston to San Francisco the following month. In December 2004, Mullenweg announced bbPress that he had written from scratch in just a few days of vacation.

Mullenweg and the WordPress team released version 1.5 “Strayhorn” in February 2005, which was downloaded over 900,000 times. The version introduced the theme system, moderation features and a new design for the frontend and backend. In late March and early April 2005, Andrew Baio found more than 168,000 hidden articles on WordPress.org that used a technique called cloaking . Mullenweg admitted to accepting this questionable type of advertisement and removed all articles from the domain. After a somewhat quieter year, he announced in October 2005 that he was leaving CNET to focus full-time on WordPress and related activities. A few days later, on October 25th, Akismet was introduced to the world . Akismet is a distributed effort to stop blog spam using the collective input of everyone who uses the service. As of November 2005, Mullenweg's WordPress.com project could no longer only be used by invitation, but became accessible to everyone. In December 2005, he introduced Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and Akismet . Automattic hired people who contributed to the WordPress project, including lead developer Ryan Boren and WordPress MU developer Donncha O Caoimh . An Akismet license deal and a WordPress bundling with Yahoo! Small business web hosting were announced at the same time.

In January 2006, Mullenweg hired former Oddpost CEO and Yahoo! top manager Toni Schneider as CEO at Automattic. Schneider was the fifth employee at Automattic. At a Regulation D-filing in April 2006, it was revealed that Automattic had received approximately $ 1.1 million in investment, which Mullenweg commented on his blog. The investors were Polaris Ventures, True Ventures, Radar Partners and CNET. The first WordCamp in July 2006 was prepared in just three weeks BarCamp style and drew more than 300 people to the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco. In 2007 a total of five WordCamps were held, in 2008 there were 26.

In March 2007, the editorial staff of PC World magazine voted Mullenweg 16th on a list of the “50 Most Important People on the Web”. He was also the youngest of the people on the list.

Mullenweg bought Gravatar in October 2007 and reportedly turned down a $ 200 million offer for Automattic.

In 2016 Mullenweg received a Heinz Award .

Trivia

Matt Mullenweg has ancestors who emigrated from Bielefeld to Texas in the mid-19th century .

Web links

Commons : Matt Mullenweg  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Matt Mullenweg: Photo Matt »The blogging software dilemma ( English ) 24. January 2003. Retrieved on 18 February, 2009.
  2. ↑ Zach Kaufmann: Do You Blog On WordPress? Thank Matt Mullenweg . In: Young Money . tape 7 , no. January 6 , 2009, ISSN  1098-8300 ( youngmoney.com [accessed February 8, 2009]).
  3. ↑ History of Global Multimedia Protocols Group ( English ) Retrieved on 18 February, 2009.
  4. ^ Matt Mullenweg: Photo Matt, "Spring Ping Thing . April 19, 2004. Retrieved February 18, 2009.
  5. ^ Mena Trott: About Six Apart - Mena's Corner . May 13, 2004. Retrieved February 18, 2009.
  6. ^ Matt Mullenweg: Photo Matt, Houston Press and CNET . October 28, 2004. Retrieved February 18, 2009.
  7. ↑ Photo Matt »Announcing bbPress . Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  8. ↑ WordPress ›Blog» Announcing WordPress 1.5 . Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  9. ↑ Waxy.org: Wordpress Website's Search Engine Spam . Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  10. ^ Photo Matt, "A Response . Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  11. ^ Photo Matt, "Leaving CNET . Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  12. ^ Photo Matt, "Akismet Stops Spam . Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  13. ^ Yodel if you Hate Spam «Akismet . Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  14. ↑ WordPress ›Blog» WordPress on Yahoo . Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  15. ↑ Company Information: Automattic INC . Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  16. ^ Photo Matt, "A Little Funding . Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  17. ↑ WordCamp Schedule ( English ) Retrieved February 18, 2009.
  18. ↑ Christopher Null: 50 Most Important People on the Web by PC World . PCWorld. Retrieved April 8, 2019.
  19. ^ Photo Matt »Number 16 . Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  20. ^ Automattic Acquires Gravatar . Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  21. ↑ Automattic Spurn's $ 200 Million Acquisition Offer . Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  22. ^ Statement by Matt Mullenweg at WordCamp Germany 2009 in Jena. ( Memento from November 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  23. ^ Charleen Mullenweg: Matt and Charleen Mullenweg genealogy website . Retrieved on July 23, 2017: "According to the passenger lists of the bark Franziska, the Muhlenwegs came from 'Heepen, Bielefeld Co., Westfalen District'."
personal data
SURNAME Mullenweg, Matthew
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mullenweg, Matt; Mullenweg, Matthew Charles
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American web developer
DATE OF BIRTH January 11, 1984
PLACE OF BIRTH Houston , Texas