Looks like Automattic has raised $29.5 million (oh so close to $30 million!) in a Series B round of funding, which includes a strategic investment from the New York Times Co. The round was led by Polaris Ventures, and includes participation from previous investors True Ventures and Radar Ventures.
Just yesterday, Automattic increased its free storage options for Wordpress to 3GB, which is a testimony not only to its growth and potential, but to its hopes to continue its appeal to its user base. So what's with this latest round of funding? Automattic plans on rolling out new "hosted services such as BBPress (forums), and will expand their other product offerings, such as Gravatar and the spam-protection service Akismet" according to GigaOm. The funding will go towards the hiring of more engineers to build out its infrastructure.
Om Malik mentioned that some additional social features may soon be creeping into Wordpress, and to this end, I've always wondered if a blogging platform as large and robust as Wordpress would also delve deeper into the micro-blogging network, given their social capabilities and the fact that Wordpress has pretty much mastered mainstream blogging.