Matt Mullenweg on owning open systems
There’s an underlying trend to many of Automattic’s recent acquisitions, a reflex to try to build or buy open alternatives to increasingly closed systems. As social media falls increasingly under Facebook’s watch, Automattic buys Tumblr; as Spotify moves to control more of the audio and podcast ecosystem, Automattic buys Pocket Casts. Parse.ly promises to be analytics minus the gross data practices; Day One promises top-notch encryption to keep your important memories and journal entries private forever. Every Automattic product is both a bet on the future and a subtle rebuke of the present.
“I think it’s crucially important to have alternatives that are creator-focused, versus advertiser-focused,” Mullenweg said. “I guess part of this is wanting alternatives to advertising business models as well.” That means betting on subscriptions, like Tumblr’s new Post+ service. It means making it easy for creators to sell things directly through WooCommerce. It means lots of other things, too, eventually.