• On CBS.com: Sexy women of CBS
October 15, 2008 1:57 PM PDT

Automattic acquires PollDaddy

Posted by Rafe Needleman
  • Print

Web-based polling and survey company PollDaddy has been acquired by Automattic, the company behind the Wordpress platform and the Wordpress.com blog hosting service.

PollDaddy offers free polls. (My most recent one is on this post: Five old-fashioned Web concepts that need to die.) The option to run more detailed surveys costs either $200 or $899 a year, depending on the volume of replies you've signed up for.

PollDaddy is based in Sligo, Ireland. CEO David Lenehan told me the company will be staying there and that his office becomes, "Automattic's first office anywhere in the world." Lenehan is "extremely happy" with the deal, terms of which he did not disclose. He said that PollDaddy was "profitable and growing at a nice rate" prior to the acquisition.

Product changes that have already been implemented include tighter integration into Wordpress.com hosted blogs and a transition to Automattic's data centers. In a blog post about the acquisition, Lenehan wrote, "Over the coming weeks and months this will mean our site will be a lot more stable, polls will load faster, and everything should run just the way you want it to."

The company will continue to stay "100 percent focused on building PollDaddy support into as many platforms as possible, so you will see our support for MySpace, Ning, Blogger, Typepad, Hi5, Orkut, Piczo, etc. continue to improve and grow," Lenehan also wrote.

Polldaddy has already been integrated into Wordpress.com's authoring system.

In a barter arrangement with CNET, PollDaddy ran the voting system for the last Webware 100 awards.

See also: Matt Mullenweg's blog: PollDaddy Goes Automattic

Rafe Needleman writes about start-ups, new technologies, and Web 2.0 products, as editor of CNET's Webware. E-mail Rafe.
Recent posts from Webware
Wikipedia gears up for flood of video and photo files
Searchme brings its Coverflow search to iPhone
More cosmetic delights for Gmail: themes
Trulia partners with 1020 Placecast for targeted ads
Mozilla CTO: Firefox in neck and neck race
Add a Comment (Log in or register) 1 comment
by andrew.mager October 15, 2008 2:13 PM PDT
It's funny how Automattic is snatching up these "plugin" startups. I wonder when they will acquire Disqus too?
Reply to this comment
advertisement

About Webware

Say No to boxed software! The future of applications is online delivery and access. Software is passé. Webware is the new way to get things done.

Add this feed to your online news reader

Webware topics

In the news now

New Internet gets outer-space tryout

NASA is using a comet-watching spacecraft to test new interplanetary networking protocols. The concepts are also being applied to flaky networks back home.



What CEO skills should Yahoo look for?

With Yahoo looking beyond Jerry Yang for a new CEO, Microsoft could be open to a mutually beneficial search deal.



advertisement

Inside CNET News

Scroll Left Scroll Right