Twitter and Etsy get high marks in report card on copyright and free speech
When it comes to balancing creative rights on the internet, companies like Twitter and Pinterest play an important role as middlemen. How are they performing?
WordPress shames Janet Jackson for bullying bloggers and issues a new takedown report
Powerful celebrities and companies are bullying some of the millions of bloggers who use the popular WordPress platform with outlandish copyright claims. Wordpress just called attention to some of the worst offenders.
Remember Google’s Wave? Thanks to Sandstorm, it’s easy to start using again
Sandstorm’s indie web app platform, which is currently crowdfunding, is picking up ports at an impressive rate. Earlier this week WordPress made an appearance, and now Apache (née Google) Wave has joined the party.
WordPress parent Automattic closes huge funding round that values the company at $1B
Automattic, the parent company of popular blog-hosting and publishing platform WordPress, has raised a funding round of $160 million to help it develop better online and mobile tools for publishing, a round that values the company at over $1 billion
Can a little-known blogger turn his site into a business by selling memberships? Ben Thompson is sure going to try
Technology analyst Ben Thompson has quit his job and is trying to turn his blog into a business by launching a freemium membership model, which gives readers access to extra features and content if they pay a monthly fee
WordPress parent Automattic said to be raising a VC round that values it at $1 billion
Automattic, the San Francisco-based company that is responsible for the WordPress web-publishing and blog-hosting platform — and the associated open-source community — is raising a round of venture capital that could value the company at $1 billion or more, according to a report in Fortune magazine. The financing is said to be in the $100-million to $150-million range. WordPress recently acquired Longreads, a content-sharing community, and has said it wants to get more into content recommendation. Web-publishing competitor Squarespace just closed a financing round of its own that was worth $40 million.
Disclosure: Automattic is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of Gigaom.
Longreads content-sharing community acquired by WordPress owner Automattic
Founder Mark Armstrong started Longreads as a Twitter hashtag five years ago and built it into a global community focused on longform writing. The startup said Wednesday that it has been acquired by Automattic, the company behind the WordPress blogging platform.
Pantheon One makes it easier to manage multiple websites
If you have lots of web sites and want to centralized content management, Pantheon One may be worth a look.
The Internet Defense League rallies to Restore the Fourth
Some of the biggest names on the Internet are joining protestors for Restore the Fourth, a protest on Independence Day in response to the PRISM scandal.