It’s a busy speaking season! I just spoke at the Intelligent Change summit, and will be at SaaStock in Austin on May 14, Brilliant Minds in Stockholm, and WordCamp EU in Basel, Switzerland, on June 7. | Continue reading
It looks like the code that the newly announced Figma Sites is producing isn’t the best. There are some cool Figma-to-WordPress workflows; I hope Sites gets more people exploring those options. | Continue reading
Gravatar has always been about giving people control over their identity online. One avatar, one profile, synced across the web, verified connections, with a fully open API. Gravatar is a true open identity layer for the internet, and now for AI. For developers, we’ve rolled out … | Continue reading
I’ve checked off a bucket list item: I’m attending a Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting. It’s really an event! Thousands flock to Omaha, Nebraska, for the legendary Q&A sessions with Warren Buffett and shareholder deals. They’ve made it quite the circus, with every Berkshire … | Continue reading
I know there’s been a lot of frustration directed at me specifically. Some of it, I believe, is misplaced—but I also understand where it’s coming from. The passing of Pope Francis has deeply impacted me. While I still disagree with the Church on many issues, he was the Pope who b … | Continue reading
I’ve been blogging now for approximately 8,465 days since my first post on Movable Type. My colleague Dan Luu helped me compile some of the “greatest hits” from the archives of ma.tt, perhaps some posts will stir some memories for you as well: Where Did WordCamps Come From? (2023 … | Continue reading
WordPress 6.8 Cecil is out, and it’s a great release. It’s unbelievable that it’s already been downloaded over 6 million times as I write this. That feeling never gets old. It’s a funny time in WordPress because there are a lot of really interesting open questions: Some of these … | Continue reading
The long-anticipated “Big Sky” AI site builder on WordPress.com went live today. It combines several models and can create logos, site designs, typography, color schemes, and content. It’s an entirely new way to interact with and edit a brand-new or existing WordPress site. This … | Continue reading
I was interviewed by Inc magazine for almost two hours where we covered a lot of great topics for entrepreneurs but almost none of it made it into the weird hit piece they published, however since both the journalist and I had recording of the interview I’ve decided to adapt some … | Continue reading
It’s so funny that my random re-engagement with Radiohead re-emergence coincides with them doing a new entity that might mean something. I did a poll on Twitter and people preferred OK Computer to Kid A 78%! | Continue reading
With the world changing so quickly, it’s hard to find alpha, but the best way is by following the brightest thinkers. This CNBC interview with Ray Dalio and Marc Benioff is good, but it’s way better if you go to the livestream about 25 minutes in and see the full discussion witho … | Continue reading
One thing you’ll see on every host that offers WordPress is claims about how secure they are, however they don’t put their money where their mouth is. When you dig deeper, if your site actually gets hacked they’ll hit you with remediation fees that can go from hundreds to thousan … | Continue reading
One of my must-read newsletters for the past several years has been Lenny’s Newsletter, probably best known for its writing on growth and product management, which really means it covered everything you need to create a great company. It expanded into a really well-done podcast; … | Continue reading
It’s been fantastic being in the Philippines for this year’s WordCamp Asia. We have attendees from 71 countries, over 1,800 tickets sold, and contributor day had over 700 people! It’s an interesting contrast to US and EU WordCamps as well in that the audience is definitely a lot … | Continue reading
In high school when 5% of your class doesn’t like you it’s like 3-5 people. Running a company of 1,700+ when 5% doesn’t like you, that’s 85 people! That fills a room. 150k followers and 5% don’t like you now you have a small stadium of 7,500 people. It’s still 5%. | Continue reading
“You didn’t just come up with a cool hash table,” he remembers telling Krapivin. “You’ve actually completely wiped out a 40-year-old conjecture!” There’s a delightful article on an undergraduate discovering an optimization in a very basic computer science principle. | Continue reading
I’ve been really enjoying the book Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull of Pixar, it was recommended to me by my colleague Dave Martin a while back and I finally got around to it. There’s an interesting story in it where George Lucas has asked him to develop a film editing system that wa … | Continue reading
You may not have heard of Logan Bartlett, but he’s one of the most hilarious people on Twitter and does a really interesting podcast. (He had a cool episode with Marc Benioff recently.) We sat down for a discussion on managing through crisis, open source and AI, employee liquidit … | Continue reading
I had a great chat with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri on their podcast, My First Million. | Continue reading
What an exciting time to be alive. I was hipped to Deepseek by Andrej Kaparthy’s tweet the day after Christmas, it was clear then that something big had happened and that it was truly open source and open weights (not this fake Llama stuff). It’s been fun to see the rest of the w … | Continue reading
It’s another year, I have ordered all the things and tested all the cables, there’s a little bit about tech and a little bit about life. Here’s what made the cut, now I’m going to be factoring in weight of everything as well. The flat-lay this year was taken at my sister Charleen … | Continue reading
Forty-one is a nice birthday because it doesn’t feel like too much pressure. For forty I did a big eclipse thing that ended up amazing, this year I’m replicating what I did a few years ago and celebrating in New York, Houston, and San Francisco. My birthday today has already been … | Continue reading
I wrote over on WordPress.org about breaking the status quo with a Joost/Karim fork. It’s a perfect time as Automattic is re-focusing its work while the legal stuff is going on. | Continue reading
WordPress.com launched a new update to Studio this week, and we’re already seeing some buzz. Studio is our free and open source app for local WordPress development, enabling you to spin up unlimited WordPress sites on your personal computer. Through its newest feature, Studio Syn … | Continue reading
When Inc Magazine reached out to have David H. Freedman (website powered by WordPress) write a feature piece I was excited because though Inc wasn’t a magazine I have read much since I was a teenager, David seemed like a legit journalist who usually writes for better publications … | Continue reading
The talented Felix Arntz has given an incredible Christmas gift to the WordPress community with his fast, light, and accessible Snow Fall plugin, which is live on this site and you can install on yours. I hope everyone is having a happy holidays! Search for “snow fall” in your pl … | Continue reading
It’s a dream come true being here in Tokyo for State of the Word 2024. We’re going to be in an amazing venue that looks over the city. Most of WordPress and Automattic’s senior leadership is here, and we’ll also have several hundred folks from the local community and press. We’ve … | Continue reading
My father attended University of Houston, and it’s where I went to college to study political science, I started WordPress when there, and then dropped out after two years to move to San Franisco. It was fun seeing UH Magazine feature an article about my journey from a University … | Continue reading
This week, DrupalCon Singapore is bringing together an incredible community of Drupal platform creators, developers, and supporters. Last year, I had the chance to share the stage with Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal, and the conversation stuck with me. It highlighted the p … | Continue reading
Very excited to share that we’ve acquired WPAI and the team is joining Automattic. They have some very cool products including CodeWP, AgentWP, and WP.chat. | Continue reading
It looks like the Dealbook Summit had a number of great interviews this year, major props to Andrew Ross Sorkin, but this one with Jeff Bezos was particularly good. | Continue reading
I’m not opposed to age-gating at all, I think it’s appropriate in many situations and useful, and democratic societies can decide their own rules there. But it should be handled and authenticated as low-level as possible, at the operating system layer. See also: Australia’s Senat … | Continue reading
I guess something has changed with the Joe Rogan / Spotify deal and now all the old episodes are on YouTube again, which means the gems from the archives can now pop up. I was alerted to this conversation between Joe Rogan and John Carmack, and it’s pure gold. I know I’m five yea … | Continue reading
As announced by Automattic and covered by TechCrunch, I want to take a moment to welcome Elijah Potter and Harper to join Automattic. Harper is a super-fast (way faster than LanguageTool and Grammerly), local English grammar checker. The technology is nascent, but I’m very excite … | Continue reading
Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly writes for the Observer, WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg Is ‘More Energized’ Than Ever Amid WP Engine Battle. | Continue reading
Quincy Jones had such an impact on the culture that it’s impossible to summarize. His discography is amazing. I feel so lucky to have met him in 2012 when I was much earlier in my career, and he didn’t have any reason to give me time, but he treated everyone as if they were impor … | Continue reading
It was a huge pain in the butt, because my mail-in ballot didn’t register properly, but I found a last-minute flight to Houston and this morning walked over to Congregation Emanu El and voted. It is our most sacred duty as a citizen. I encourage every American to vote. | Continue reading
I’ve been obsessed with Jacob Collier since I first saw his Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing cover on YouTube, and one of my favorite genres of videos is genius musicians breaking down the incredible musical stuff Jacob is doing. (He even has his own instrument now.) This reaction a … | Continue reading
On Wednesday I had a great chat with Connie Loizos, the editor in chief of TechCrunch, you can view the video here: Then yesterday Automattic filed its legal responses to the spurious lawfare from WP Engine, Silver Lake, and Quinn Emanuel. It’s a bit long, but if you have time gi … | Continue reading
A quick followup on my prior conversation with Theo. During that chat, I talked briefly about a trademark infringer that was also distributing nulled plugins. I said “Not illegal. Legal under the GPL. But they weren’t changing the names. They were selling their customers Pro Plug … | Continue reading
Back in June I recorded an episode with Jaclyn Lindsey on the Why Kindness podcast, for their awesome non-profit kindness.org. You can listen to it through Pocket Casts here: This is kind of funny because I’m obviously in the midst of the big battle with Silver Lake and WP Engine … | Continue reading
WP Engine has filed hundreds pages of legal documents seeking an injunction against me and Automattic. They say this about community or some nonsense, but if you look at the core, what they’re trying to do is ask a judge to curtail my First Amendment rights. The First Amendment i … | Continue reading
There are two great Cloudflare-related stories published this weekend. The first is Steven Levy’s incredible story about Tim Jenkin, who created a secure communication protocol for the African National Congress to overthrow the apartheid regime in South Africa. Cloudflare’s CTO, … | Continue reading
It’s a heavy day, and I’m sad to write this. Not sure where to start. In 2022, a lawyer recruited two people who took care of my Mom—an assistant and one of her dozen nurses—to resign and demand a million dollars each, or they would publish horrible things about her in a lawsuit. … | Continue reading
I’ll just remind everyone at the start that this a respectful debate, and DHH and I tried to get on a call but couldn’t because we were both traveling. However, “Automattic is doing open source dirty” is an abomination of a headline, and David’s second post Open source royalty an … | Continue reading
Last Friday we said goodbye to 159 colleagues as part of our alignment offer. It was a tough day, there are a lot of close relationships within Automattic, and goodbyes are always hard. On Monday, I got to be Oprah for a few minutes. We had scheduled a town hall for leaders aroun … | Continue reading