Automattic, the company behind WordPress, has acquired Irish startup Polldaddy for an undisclosed sum. The purchase gives WordPress an infusion of polling technology and seems to be justified simply on the basis that bloggers love polls (we use PollDaddy here at TechCrunch for many of our posts).
There appears to be a plugin rollup strategy of sorts underway at the highly decentralized blogging startup, one that will result in the absorption of features into the WordPress codebase that are currently provided through extensions. Automattic recently purchased Intense Debate, a small TechStars startup working on an advanced commenting platform. Further back, it also acquired Buddy Press, a project for layering social networking features onto WordPress, in March and Gravatar, a universal avatar system, last Fall.
Like Intense Debate, Polldaddy doesn’t offer its technology to WordPress publishers alone - and it doesn’t plan to phase out its support for other platforms post-acquisition. But we can expect both companies’ efforts to be driven primarily towards improving WordPress - both the open source version offered at WordPress.org, but even more importantly the hosted version at WordPress.com (with which Automattic can actually make money). PollDaddy has already been baked into WordPress.com for its 4.4 million bloggers.
Given the economic concerns that many startups (domestic and global) have in these volatile times, I’m sure that both PollDaddy and Intense Debate are happy to have found a home within a larger and better funded startup. The fact that PollDaddy is based in Ireland shouldn’t have much impact on Automattic’s corporate structure. As CEO Toni Schneider explained at a recent Startup2Startup event, Automattic has no central office and all its employees work remotely from home, only to meet up a couple times per year as a company.
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I think WP’s recent acquisitions are perhaps the best demonstration of the web 2.0 bubble. Who spends money on a commenting system and a polling system? Really? Are you fucking serious?
I just don’t get it. These are things that could be written by any competent developer in a matter of days, if not less than one day. Unless the acquisition prices were less than $1,000 per (doubtful!), then I don’t see how this makes any sense.
I don’t know how much the company’s spending but the purchases seem pretty smart to me. Automattic is buying its way to a sophisticated publishing platform. And these are not technologies “any competent developer” can build in “a matter of days”.
Mark I’ve written multiple commenting systems and polling systems. While making the exact product that WP bought in both cases may take slightly more than a few days (but only slightly), the core functionality is not complicated in any sense of the word. It doesn’t make sense to me to spend (guessing) $100 - $500K to buy these out, when it would not be hard to just write their own.
I guess that’s web 2.0 for you
As I said in my post, we looked at building it ourselves but ultimately found that while on the surface polling and surveys are simple problems, there is a lot of hidden complexity there that you don’t fully appreciate until you start to build it out. There’s also the fact that PollDaddy has a great brand and is already used by a number of prominent publishers like Techcrunch, RWW, Gizmodo in addition to several hundred thousand other users.
I’ve got to agree with Sean on this one. They seriously couldn’t come up with their own polling system? How often do you see Wordpress bloggers actually using a poll that they could use from one of the many poll plug-ins???
That’s cool to hear. Perhaps I’ll consider switching over to WordPress later on this year (at least on one of my blogs).
that’s is cool. I like polldady
Congrats to the PollDaddy team!
Well done PollDaddy, well done Automattic, well done Ireland! Don’t forget Automattic already has one Irish man on the team and he’s based in Cork in Ireland. Home of MaxRoam, Twitterfone and TweetRush.
Great to see more Irish web companies getting the business/publicity that they deserve! Well done everyone.
Fantastic news for the lads
Love the product, love the country oh and love Cork
Seriously a very well executed product, The twitter version is a wow
Well done lads
Great news for the PollDaddy guys, well done, and another great reflection on Ireland2.0
This whole ’someone could have built this in a couple of days’ shit is really beginning to get old. If someone else (you, perhaps, dear TC reader?) could have done it so easily WHY DIDN’T THEY? It’s like people looking at modern art and saying that they could have made it in their garage. Mockery of successful entrepreneurs is easy - sticking your neck out from your safe little job (and not hiding behind the anonymity of blog comments) to take that risk and build something great is a little bit harder. You’re demonstrating nothing short of cowardice.
As I see it - well done to Polldaddy. Good work, lads.
It’s okay, people have been saying the same about WordPress for 5 years now.
Congrats Matt, I believe this recent acquisition just shows a path of clever moves. Well done.
People that say they could have easily built something that is now successful are probably not entrepreneurs …
These are the same people that wonder why buy a burger for $5 when they can make it at home for $1
they need to just buy a security company to fix all the wordpress exploits due to lackluster Q & A.
Well done to the lads. Great product and a smart acquisition for Automattic. C’mon the Irish.
When two of my favourite companies get together it makes me very happy indeed. When one of them is PollDaddy, I really couldn’t be happier. Lenny and the crew deserve every single bit of their success, I am over the moon for them.
It highlights a few things:
* There are great web services being built in Ireland
* Those services can be built in remote parts of the country
* The opportunities are global not local
* Irish VCs wouldn’t recognise an opportunity if it kicked them in the head - Head of Irish Venture Capital Association: “not in dot.com companies or because someone has a nice widget”
Now we just have to get Donncha and Lenny to convince Automattic to move HQ to Ireland. Half way between Cork and Sligo is Athlone. C’mon you know you want to
Well the PollDaddy office in Sligo is actually the first office that Automattic has in the world, so we’re there! If more Donncha/Eoin/Lenny caliber people apply to Automattic we’d be happy to have them as part of the family and expand our presence there.
I do not agree with “any competent developer can build polldaddy within days”.
As one of the developers behind two highly competitive polling systems - VeriPoll.com and DeskPolls.com, I can tell you that the number of optimizations you need to do and the list of features you can support is huge.
Consider these for example:
- Integrated VIDEO advertisements.
- Multiple questions in a single poll instance.
- Poll Widgets which can run on any site.
- Live Previews.
- Poll Widgets which can run on restricted opensocial engines like Orkut, facebook.
Fantastic news for PollDaddy and Automattic. Agree with @matt that yes its a simple problem, but has many hidden complexities especially when considering scale. Poll Daddy have worked hard from both an engineering and business perspective to make a deligltful and easy to use product. When a company such as PollDaddy do something so well, and are experts in their domain, it makes good sense to make use them and if thats by merging the skilsets, well so be it.
Congrats to both parties, two domain experts like this joining is always good for us the end consumers. Cork, Sligo, Dublin … Ireland is happening!
His first name is “Matt”, not “@matt” you effing twittard!
Super result for PollDaddy and a great acquisition for Automattic.
PollDaddy have served over 1m polls and only recently did they they add their second developer Eoin.
Well Done Lenny you are and example to us all here in Web 2.0 Ireland.
This makes great sense for Automattic. Can’t wait to see how they incorporate polling! Great News for PollDaddy, well done.
Well done to the PollDaddy guys. Automattic have picked up some great technology and a smart team.
Great news guys. Another great showcase for great software built by Irish geeks. Oh and Sean? Go build it in 2 days then.
Brilliant news David and Eoin, great encouragement for the rest of us. I’ve used the product and love it. Up the North West!
Congrats Lenny and Eoin - and shout out to Jonathan [who's in Oz] - great work… all came along way since Widget event in SF back in 2006 - how many votes again….
With Donncha already on board - the Automattic team is now big in Ireland - and probably has its first office worldwide in the BIC
Check some local Irish coverage at - http://www.web2ireland.org/200.....wordpress/
Looking forward to celebration pints again in Sligo
Huge Congrats to Lenny and Eoin as so many have already said its great to see Irish companies do so well. And any one who ever thought you had to be in the Capital, let alone the Valley to succeed this story will be a great inspiration.
Big up Ireland and my Home town Sligo
I like PollDaddy. It’s a great product, and a smart acquisition for Automattic. Congrats.
Pollday is a great product .. I think it was a good move .
They deserve their payday 100% - well done lads!
To anyone saying how easy it is to just build these features - go download the code for Wordpress. It’s open source. Build your own business on top. Scale it. Raise $$. Make $$. Yeah, easy, ain’t it?
Congrats to PollDaddy and to Wordpress for making smart acquisitions.
PollDaddy sounds more like a company out of West Virginia than Ireland.
Did you know that polldaddy no longer offers a flash-based poll? You need javascript to run their polls on your site. Wonder how much biz they will lose with that decision.
Polls are must have on blogs, but PollDaddy no longer supports flash-based polls.
well deserved lads and shows that anything is possible, not just in Silicon Valley or Capital Cities but anywhere that passionate and determined people gather.
Keith
Congratulations to PollDaddy and Automattic. More Irish interest in Automattic eh!
Good move by Wordpress, Polldaddy is really nice. Congrats!
Great to see more Irish geeks setting the tech world on fire. And I can’t wait to see how PollDaddy is integrated into wordpress. Actually, I’m just all excited now!
Congrats to both sides - well deserved success for PollDaddy, and a smart move by Automattic.
Terrific news Lenny & Eoin and to all those involved.
another reason to love WordPress.
Great news and well needed boost for the Irish startup scene. VCs take note.
Great news for a great service. Here’s a site that still allows you to create, add to and download flash-based surveys: http://www.yayboo.com
I wonder, why WP has taken such a step when they could implement such kind of functionality on their own very easily and cheaply ?
@ comment #1, Sean,
You have clearly demonstrated your asinine way of thinking.
They’re BLOGGING SOFTWARE man. How does polling and advanced commenting NOT make sense? Do yourself a favor and never start an internet company. These moves are genius on Automattic’s part.
Wonder if tax shelter is a motivation for acquiring in Ireland and keeping an office there… hmmm..
polldaddy is awesome!
WordPress is amazing company and will keep amazing