Matt Mullenweg, Toni Schneider and the crew at Automattic should be giving out lessons to the world’s major businesses in how to succeed since it seems while everyone else is going down the tubes and contemplating doom and gloom, Automattic and it’s various endeavors are developing like mad, sipping at funds, gaining $29.5 million in financing (yeah, that’s what I said) and bringing the New York Times on as another investor. Not too shabby for a company that owes it’s beginning to a young fellow fooling around with code in his bedroom.
Looks like WordPress.com, WordPress.org, Gravatar, Akismet and bbPress are going to be around for good long time yet. I love it. Now here’s hoping they keep their heads screwed on straight.
Disclaimer: This information has probably been posted on various sites hundreds of times already…So this is one more. Can’t help it if I like these folks now can I?
Hopefully they’ll put some of that money towards customer service classes for their employees and working on the bugs that have existed for eons over at wp.com. I’m losing my domain since their renewal process is broken and they refuse to respond to support requests. And that’s after answering over 7k questions for them in their support forums.
Their lack of respect for volunteers is amazing.
drmike: (welcome to the other side of things!)
I have to agree with you, for all that Automattic does well, they really fall down on the job when it comes to customer service. It’s as good as non-existent. And the forum’s are almost a no man’s land for newbies especially the WordPress.org side of things where you can be insulted just for asking a simple question, present company excluded of course. More than once I’ve rescued someone asking for help after being talked down to by one of those so self proclaimed “senior moderators”. Ah well, one can always hope.
On your domain: Isn’t purchasing a domain name through WP.com the same as purchasing a domain from anywhere? I’m wondering if you couldn’t just transfer to another domain name server and renew it there instead. You should still be able to use that domain at WP.com irregardless of domain name server. For example, my wife’s website is hosted at Bluehost but her domain name server is Network Solutions and I distinctly remember WP.com, when they first began offering domains for sale, that you could bring your own if you already had one.
Or maybe you already know this? I do run on though.